Il^fiiilii iiiillillliii 











A^ 





• • 




8 J. A V E R Y , 




AND 


■'i-i 


THE REMEDY; 

OR, 


PJU 


iiNCIPLES AND SUGGESTIONS 




KOE A 




REMEDIAL CODE. 

■ 




By SAMUEL NOTT. 




iuiuis liiuKe free, bo ihey but righteous bonds. Freedom enslaves, if it bo an 
unrighteous freedom."— Pagk 2S. 


!^ 


FOURTH EDITION 


1 


B OSTON: 




eUOCKER AND BREWSTER 




NEW YORK: — APPLETON AND CO., 


'; 


M. W. DODD. 


i 


1856. 



SLAVERY 



THE REMEDY; 



OK, 



PRINCIPLES AND SUGGESTIONS 



REMEDIAL CODE 



By SAMUEL NOTT. 



' Bonds make free, be they but righteous bonds. Freedom enslaves, if it bo i 
unrighteous freedom." — Paqe 28. 



FOURTH EDITION. 

BOSTON: 
CROCKER AND BREWSTER. 

NEW YOKK: — APPLETON 4 CO., 

M. W. DODD. 

1856. 



h 



ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 

At the close of the year 1856, — a year of remarkable illustration of the 
principles of this work — at this breathing time of the strife of sections, so 
suitable for sober and benevolent thought, I have summed up the whole 
matter in three additional pages ; closed with a Dedication to the PEorLE 
OF THE United States, — a brief and earnest Appeal to the whole Union, 
affixed, not prefixed, because it proceeds on the principles which the work 
illustrates, and in the hope that when the reader has reached it, he will be 
prepared to welcome it. 

The author has received with great satisfaction and thankfulness the 
spontaneous approbation of many of the Aviscst and the best, both North and 
South, — such that he is encoiu-aged to believe his work not unfitted for 
the high purposes at which it aims, — to engage the South in their proper 
work in behalf of the African race, and to unite the North in taking the 
only position in which they can render effectual as well as acceptable aid. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1855, by 

CROCKER AND BREWSTER, 
In the Clei-k's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts 



INTRODUCTION. 



We meet Slavery as a fact, not as a proposal. We have to 
do with slaveholding, not with slave-making. We seek not what 
should be done if there were no slaves, but what is right and best 
now that there are more than three millions. We seek the right 
method, and the best method in existing circumstances. 

Admitting the evil of Slavery, and the imperious demand for 
a Remedial Code, but denying slaveholding as a crime />er se, 
and immediate abolition as the remedy ; — asserting that the Afri- 
can race is fixed, and must be provided for chiefly on our soil, and 
yet approving heartily colonization in Africa ; — claiming that the 
climate and productions of the South, and the original and actrial 
condition of the enslaved race, forbid the methods of the Nortli aiul 
the Anglo-Saxon race ; — turning the question from mere abolition 
and mere slavery, to the well-being of a people providentially 
on our hands ; — and, lastly, fixing the responsibility upon each 
slaveholding State, separately, and denying it to the United States, 
— a remedy is sought suited to the peculiar case, — a Remedial 
Code, at least an experiment of relief and benefit, which wisely 
and successfully made by any single State, might lead the whole 
sisterhood in her train. 

A Christian State, philanthropic, patriarchal, is hound to abolish 
just so much of Slavery as is injurious, and no more ; to retain 



4 INTKODUCTION. 

just SO much as is heneficial, and no less. The Christian iKitri- 
arch and Cliristian philanthropist need not he at variance, if they 
will hut unite in the simple attempt to promote the well-heing of 
the slaves in and ivith the tvell-leing of the whole people. 

The leading point to be kept in view in a Remedial Code, is 
to preserve the essential quality of Slavery -vvithoiit the evils 
which are not of its essence : in other words, to secure the tAvo 
counterparts, the being "held to labor," and the being held to 
maintain labor, without the evils which now attach to both mas- 
ters and slaves, and to the whole community directly or remotely 
connected. A Remedial Code must aim at the following pur- 
poses : — 

1. To provide for the slaves, as a mass, something better than 
freedom ; — such advantages and securities as shall compensate 
their being held to labor ; so that a considerate slave might 
prefer the price of freedom, to freedom purchased by its price ; 
and the whole mass of slaves have an interest m the continued 
institution. 

2. To provide for the masters something better than " Slavery 
as it is ; " a more available labor in return for the " rations " and 
privileges of the laborer ; better service with less difBculties and 
fears : so that a considerate master might prefer the Remedial 
to the existing code ; and the whole body of masters find their 
interest in aiding and sustaining it. 

3. To provide for the free blacks and those becoming free 
something better than the present condition of their class; sat- 
isfactory to themselves, and at the same time harmless and help- 
ful to the well-being of both masters and slaves. 

4. Incidental, but of immeasurable importance, — to satisfy 
the conscience and philanthropy of the country, not merely by 
the "juste milieu," — the "happy medium" between evil extremes, 
— but to give full scope to the truest benevolence, the most 



INTRODUCTION. 

faithful duty, the most earnest Christian charity ; in which the 
South, taking the indispensable lead, shall welcome with the 
whole heart the aid of the North. 

The writer is deeply sensible of the difficulties in devising 
and executing such a code and with such results. But are 
there not greater difficulties in either other alternative ? 

If Slavery be retained " as it is," can it be without difficulties 
and woes, without fears and anxieties, which must despoil it of its 
essential quality of useful labor, of valuable service ? 

If Slavery be abolished, can it be without impracticable difficul- 
ties ; whetlier at the South in providing for the well-being of 
both races in their new relations, or at the North when the tide 
of freed slaves shall come in like a flood. 

But without comparison, such a code can be attempted and 
accomplished only in a Christian country and by a Christian 
people. To a Christian country and a Christian people, we make 
our appeal. The sense of responsibility, the benevolent intention, 
the reliance on infinite strength, must be supposed in order to the 
sincere attempt, and successful execution. But these supposed, 
then all difficulties are provided for, if the attempt be right and 

wise If a Remedial Code be the true obedience to the 

golden rule ; if Christian good will, if the love of our neighbor 
as ourselves, require not emancipation but amelioration, who 
shall dare discoui'age or forbid ? Nothing is impossible with 
God. Nothing is impossible to him wlio bclieveth. No attempt 
within the warrant of Christianity is to be tliought impossible. 
Trust and try. Attempt what God requires, and " account him 
faithful who has promised." If the work linger and seem every 
day more and more impossible, are we not then at the very point 
for Christian faith ; for " hope against hope," in Him "who calleth 
those things that be not as though they were." "Who shall dare to 
say that the Christian Patriarchs of the South, and the Christian 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

Philanthropists of the North, will not unite in seeking the aid of 
Heaven, and in Heaven's strength prevail, — fixing their eye, 
amidst the darkness and the storm, upon the only and sufficient 
encouragement; — The things which are impossible with 

MEN ARE possible WITH GOD. 
Wareham, Mass., Dec. 1855. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

ADMISSIONS, DENIALS, DISTINCTIONS. 

Slavery an Evil. — Mutual Bondage. — Slave-holding not a Crime. — 
Slave-holding and Slave-making distinguished. — Crime defined, 
whether with Bond or Free. — Principle of dealing with stolen Goods 
or stolen Men. — Misnomers. — Fallacies. — Distinctions in order to 
a Kemedy 11 

CHAPTER II. 

TILE PROBLEM OF AFRICA IN AMERICA. 

Impossibility of Removal, requiring a Remedy.' — Results of Coloniza- 
tion for one third of a Centurj-. — Comparison of emigration from the 
British Isles. — The proper work of the Colonization Society. — Room 
demanded for Africa in America 16 

CHAPTER III. 

CLIMATE AND PRODUCTIONS OF 1"HE SOUTH. — ORIGINAL 
AND ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE ENSLAVED RACE. 

Methods of the North and the Anglo-Saxon Race forbidden by Climate 
and Productions. — Mr. Webster's Speech at Rochester. — Forbidden 
by Barbarism at Emigration, and actual state. — Probable Results if 
African Emigration had been free. — The sense of the North shown 
in the " Black Codes." — Comparison of Rome and Carthage 19 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE QUESTION TURNED TO WELL-BEING. 

Not Pro-Slavery nor Anti-Slaverj-, but Well-being. — Good Bonds re- 
tained, bad Bonds removed. — Competition of European Labor. — 
Things not Words. — Wrong of enslaving changes not the Question. 
The Repentant Pirate. — The Common Doom and its Purpose. — 
Bonds make Free. — Presumptuous Franchises 23 



8 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS WITH BARBARISM. 

Page. 
Comparison of the Africo-American -nith the aboriginal African. — The 
race improved by Slaverj', evils notwithstanding. — Dr. Channing's 
testimony. — Rev. Mr. Pajnie's. — Rev. Mr. Miller's. — Liberia a wit- 
ness. — Comparison of the Africo-American with the aboriginal Amer- 
ican Increase and Improvement contrasted with Deterioration and 

Extermination. — False Explanation. — Conclusion from American 
Experiments with Barbarism 29 

CHAPTER VI. 

EUROPEAN EXPERIMENTS WITH SERFDOM. 

Assumptions of the Nineteenth Century. — Its Wisdom from Centuries 
preceding. — European Experiments suggesting Prevention. — Misery 
of the Masses. — Paradox of Freedom. — Presumptuous Franchises. — 
Law of mutual Interdependence from Job and the Prophets, — Euro- 
pean Experiments. — France before and since 1789. — Ireland. — Sir 
Robert Peel's statement of the Ulster Experiment. — England. — 
Blackstone on imperfect application of Remedy. — Conclusion there- 
from 39 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE RESPONSIBILITY. 

Sense of Responsibility assumed. — Responsibility to God. — No Athe- 
istical Wisdom for social AVcU-Being. — Limits. — Mad Astronomers 
and Philanthropists. — Christian Equalization by Inequality. — Indi- 
vidual Responsibility Responsibility of the State to the great Over- 
ruler. — Outside Responsibilities 43 



CHAPTER VIII. 

IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Irresponsibility for the Constitution. — Not Man's Device, in 1787, but 
God's Ordinance, progressing for a thousand Years. — Wittenagemot. 

— Magna Charta. — Declaration of Rights. — Virginia. — Plymouth. 

— Royal Charters and State Claims. — Many New Englands. — 
Growing Unity. — Natural and artificial Bonds 48 



CHAPTER IX. 

UNION BY SEPAllATION. 

Page. 
United because separate. — Early Advantages of Franee, Holland, and 
Spain. — How overcome. — Examples at Louisburg and Fort du 
Quesne. — The French War and Conquest of Canada. — Error of 1 78 1 
acknoAvledged by cotemporaneous Sj-mbols. — Impossibilities since. — 
Impossibilities now. — Dissolution of the Union impossible. — Sepa- 
ration only by War ; Peace only by Union 55 

ciiaptp:r X. 

THE LAW OF EQUAL FORCES. 

Equilibrium of North and South. — Necessary Impotence and Irrespon- 
sibility. — Ilesults of Equilibrium hitherto and hereafter. — Equal 
Impotence of North and South. — Union not hindered or forbidden 
thereby. — False Views of Domination and Subser^'iency. — Scope for 
Northern Philanthropy. — Illustration from the Cotton Gin 62 

CHAPTER XI. 

ADVANTAGES OF STATE SUPREMACY. 

Acknowledged Impotence, the strongest Appeal of the North to the 
South. — Slaveholding States alone competent. — Advantage of single 
Responsibility, beginning on a small scale and extending by success- 
ful Experiment. — Examples in ^Mechanical Improvements. — Steam 
Navigation. — Erie Canal and the Empire State. — Political Progress. 
— Revolution of 1G88. —Birth of the Union, 1690. — Capture of 
Louisburg. — Washington and Virginia. — Patrick Henry. — Con- 
stitutional Convention. — Individual Influence. — Jay, Hamilton, 
and Madison. — Moral like physical Forces. — Impotence the Reser- 
vou- of Safety and of Power 67 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE COMMON TERRITORIES AND FREE SOIL. 

Political Right aiBrmed. — Partnership and Dividends. — Surplus Rev- 
enue. — Surplus Lands. — Letter of the Constitution. — Impotence 
of the North in the Strife of Equal Forces. — Impotence of the South 

as well as the North Fugitive Slave Law. — The Better " Cordon." 

— The tnie Desideratum. — Northern Views. — Territorial Commis- 



10 CONTENTS. 

Page, 
sion and Experiment. — "The Higher Law," and its true Applica- 
tion. — Comparison of the ♦' Law of Nations " and the Law of Ocean 
and Shore 75 

CHAPTER XIII. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR A REMEDIAL CODE. 

Section I. — Mutual Bonds of Labor and Capital. — Essential quality 
of Slavery to be maiutauied. — Mutual Dependence requuing Mutual 
Bonds. — Labor to be secured to the Slave and to the !Master, — Modes 
of securing voluntary Labor. — Modes of enforcement 87 

Section 2. — Marriage and the Domestic Relatioiis. — Laws of Marriage 
and Divorce, and related Vices, the same for Bond as Free. — Slavery 
in aid. — Reference to Jamaica. — Advantages to Mastci's. — Provi- 
sion for Difficulties. — Southern Propositions and Views 92 

Section 3. — Sales and Emigration. — Inconveniences to Sellers. — How 
provided for. — To Buyers. — Compensations. — Necessary Emigra- 
tion 94 

Section 4. — Slaves to be capable of holding Property. — Master's Claim 
undisturbed. — Present Methods of acquiring, holding and trans- 
mitting, legalized. — New Methods of earning and investing 98 

Section 5. — Education and Religious Worship. — Claims of the Slave. 

— No just Education but Religious. — Religious, how given. — With 
and without public Provision. — Religious Worship 102 

Section 6. — Protection of the Laivs. Judicial Provisions and Methods. — 
General Laws to be applicable to Bond as well as free, — Special Ex- 
ceptions. — Special Laws and Repeals. — Slave Officers and Courts. 

— Mr. Steele. — Mr. McDonough 104 

Section 7. — Franchises and Freedom. — Franchises of Slaves as Slaves. 

— Personal Freedom. — How obtained, and its Franchises. — How 
limited. — Resorts 108 

Section 8. — Methods for the Free. — Registration. — Liberty of Settle- 
ment and Emplojinent. — Aids to Property. — Accustomed Em- 
plojTuents commended. — Way to Rise. — Opportunities. — Colored 

Communities. — Liberia 110 

Conclusion 115 

Postscript.— The Contest for «' Speaker " illustrating Chapter X 117 



SLAVERY AND THE REMEDY 



CHAPTER I. 

ADMISSIONS, DENIALS, DISTINCTIONS. 

I BEGIN with the admission that slavery is an evil requiring a 
remedy ; an evil both to the master and the slave. "Without deny- 
ing the larger share to the slave, the master's chains are scarcely 
less galling, and his sighs for relief are perhaps the more earnest 
of the two. " Our oppressed brethren at the South " are white as 
well as black. The slaves need to be released from the actual evils 
of their bondage to their mastei-s, and the masters need to be re- 
leased from the actual evils of their bondage to their slaves. No 
doubt slavery is an evil, imperiously demanding a remedy at once 
the best and the eai-liest possible — this year if you can ; this day, 
this instant, if you can. If the slaves can be transformed into an 
industrious and thriving peasantry, and the masters into industrious 
and thriving proprietors, the sooner the better. Nothing can be 
more desirable than a code truly remedial ; nothing can be more 
the absolute duty of a Christian state than to devise, enact, and 
execute such a code as speedily as possible. 

Admitting, then, most distinctly, slavery as an evil requiring the 
earliest possible remedy, I deny it as a crime ; as " a sin per se " at 
this present instant, before the earliest possible remedy. Slavery is 
an evil ; and, of necessity, it is a sin to make a slave, or to make 
one's self a slave ; but it does not follow that it is a sin to hold a 
slave. You are not responsible for an evil any further than you 
can prevent or cure it. You arc not guilty for being a slave when 



12 

you cannot help it by any right method ; neither are you guilty for 
being a slaveholder when you cannot help that by any right method. 
The entering voluntarily into slavery is a crime ; the bringing men 
into slavery is a crime. So is entering voluntarily into poverty, or 
bringing others into poverty, a crime ; but it is not, therefore, a 
crime to be poor, or to have poor neighbors. So it is with sickness 
and broken bones. It is a crime to make yourself or another man 
sick, to break your own or another man's bones ; but not to be sick, 
or have broken bones, or to be surrounded by the diseased and 
maimed until by all right methods you can make them whole and 
sound. It is not more a crime to be a slave until you can become 
rightly and advantageously free, or to hold other men in slavery 
until you can rightly and advantageously set them free from what- 
ever galling bonds. 

Expanding this common sense only on one side; slave-holding, 
until slave-freeing can be accomplished rightly and advantageously, 
is not, cannot be a crime ; is not, cannot be a sin. It is wrong to 
enslave ; but slaves being found upon our hands, we are responsible, 
not for the enslaving, which occurred without our knowledge, and 
before our existence, but for remedying the evil as soon as we can. 

To apply this to the opprobrious comparison of holding stolen 
goods : To steal is a crime ; to hold stolen goods from the owners 
for yourself is a crime. The partaker is as bad as the thief But 
it is not a crime, but a virtue, to hold stolen goods in careful trust, 
in safe keeping, for the owner, to avail the utmost for his ben- 
efit. * * * A stolen looking glass ! a stolen watch ! What ! 
as soon as you know it, as quick as thought and muscle can act, are 
you to dash them on the pavement from the third loft, and glory 
in the speed with which you clear yourself of the guilt of holding 
stolen goods ? Far better hold them a day, a week, a year, ten 
years, if need be, in order to restore them most advantageously to 
the rightful owner. * * * 

A stolen man ! found on your hands ! in your house ! What shall 
you do ? The goods are delicate, and may be injured or destroyed 
by over haste. Beware lest you kill or maim him in your hurry. 
File gently ; do not hew, lest in loosing his chains you mutilate or 
destroy. Do not toss him headlong from the uppermost window at 
the hazard of every bone in his body. Take time rather to lead 
him dehberately down stairs, through safe passages, that at least he 



13 

may have a fair escape with life and limb as he goes from your 
hands, or you may incur a graver guilt than that of holding a 
stolen man. 

Gf course I deny the duty of immediate emancipation on the part 
sf those to whom tlie question belongs ; i. e., without such provis- 
ions and arrangements as require time — as must fit themselves 
gradually to the people concerned. " Institutions are not made, but 
grow." If I could persuade the legislatures of the slaveholding 
States to abolish slavery January 1, 1856, I would not do it. If I 
were autocrat, I would not decree it. I believe there is a more 
excellent way than immediate and unconditional emancipation. 
Sat cito, si sat bene. Soon enough, if well enough : too soon, if not 
well done. 

In truth, immediate emancipation is impossible : however claimed 
m theory, it cannot be practic;dly adopted. Every proposal and 
attempt carries in itself the principle of a necessary and righteous 
delay. Be it longer or shorter, there is an interval in which the 
master may and must remain a master — in which the slave may 
and must remain a slave. There is no ultra-abolitionist so utterly 
lost to all common sense as to deny that the individual master may 
delay, in order to such legal arrangements as shall secure and make 
advantageous the boon he confers ; or that the State may take time 
to give ibrm and scope to the enactments by which it undertakes to 
emancipate. There is an interval — be it longer or shorter, wliether 
till to-morrow noon, January 1, or some more distant period — need- 
ful for a good and permanent result, as Christian discretion may 
decide. The crime is, the disobeying the rules for the interval, and 
deferring or neglecting the good and pei'manent result. 

I do not forget the popular phrases assumed as establishing crim- 
inality, such as " the holding human beings as property ; " '' retain- 
ing the earnings of the slave ; " but to me they seem to make the 
arguments in which they stand the merest fallacies — arguments 
from misnomers, as if they were true names ; from words used in a 
peculiar, as if they had been used in the ordinary sense. " To 
insure life" is the most guilty presumption if the term be employed 
in its ordinary and not in its technical sense. " To seU the time " 
of a minor is arrogance and oppression if you take the words in 
any but the peculiar meaning which custom has settled, and then it 



14 

may be as kind to him and his friends as it is just in you. " To 
hold human beings as property " is a crime -when the terms are 
understood in the ordinary sense instead of that which custom has 
settled; and then it may be as right as it is unavoidable. The 
charge is a mere criminatio verhorum without regard to the essen- 
tial qualities of the act condemned, which, in the circumstances and 
for the time, may be a duty. Undoubtedly it is a sin to " hold men 
as property" without regard to the nature and relations of the 
goods, and then the sin lies in the criminal disregard. So it is folly 
to hold glass as property without due regard to the nature and 
relations of glass ; but the folly lies in the disregard to its brittleness, 
and to the hard substances which expose it to be broken. It is 
both folly and crime to hold human beings " as property " without 
regard to physical, intellectual, social, and moral qualities and rela- 
tions ; but the folly and wickedness lie in that criminal disregard. 
So far is the idea of property, in its limited and peculiar sense, from 
being the essential quality of the sin, that the sin would be substan- 
tially the same if those attributes of men were not regarded among 
your free neighbors up to your power. If the African population 
were free you would hold your relation to them sinfully if you did 
not regard them in all their qualities and relations as men. 

The condemnation for " withholding the earnings of the slave " 
is equally fallacious. " The slave does all the work, the master 
takes all the pay ! " Does he indeed ? Whence, then, another 
plea? viz., that fi-ee labor is more profitable than slave labor, be- 
cause, forsooth, the slave gets a greater share of the pay than the 
freeman — more pay for less labor : his own maintenance, with that 
of liis children and parents, and security for the future to boot ! 
In truth, if the needs of the slave are duly cared for, the master 
does not " withhold the earnings of the slave." The capitalist, em- 
ploying labor on such terms as custom authorizes, and the laws of 
capital require, — the only terms on which capital can for any length 
of time pay labor, — is, in respect to withholding earnings, precisely 
on the same footing as the slaveholder, with the exception that the 
merciful slaveholder has the worst of the bargain. 

No doubt the capitalist, southern or northern, may withhold from 
labor its rightful earnings ; and in cither case let the judgment be 
according to the fault. But when the slave is provided for accord- 



15 

ing to his wants and his master's means, then his earnings are not 
•withheld, but bestowed just as truly as are paid the wages of the 
northern laborer. 

Do we then make light of slavery, or become the advocates and 
upholders of every evil in connection with it ? Alas, if we do ! 
Let not the reader condemn us for these necessary distinctions until 
he has heard us through. 



16 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PROBLEM OP AFRICA IN AMERICA. 

The evil of slavery admitted, the next preliminary in order to a 
remedial code must be the settled fact of an Africo- American -pop- 
ulation. The African race is established, and must be provided for 
chiefly on our soil. The evil is to be remedied ; it cannot be re- 
moved. The problem of Africa in America is the problem to be 
solved. 

The difficulties which beset the actual case are such that the the- 
ory of removal is undoubtedly the simplest and easiest. Yet, if 
only a theory utterly impracticable, it leaves the question of a reme- 
dial code on the spot to our earnest and determined, if indeed still 
our reluctant consideration. 

That the African race cannot be removed, seems to me so plain 
as to supersede argument ; as to need only to be Asserted ; all assump- 
tions and projects to the contrary notwithstanding. Be it for good 
or evil, for weal or woe, the African race has become too numerous 
to be removed — cannot be removed from, America to Africa so 
rapidly as to equal the natural increase, much less to exceed it. 
Nothing but some criminal check put in the way — some principle 
of decay and decrease introduced, added to compulsory and unmer- 
ciful transportation, can remove the one half of the natural increase. 
The evil must be remedied, not removed. The sooner this point is 
settled the better. 

This assertion, needing no argument, might find argument in the 
facts which meet the writer as he repeats from an article published 
in 1820. " The Colonization Society is a noble institution, and in 
behalf of Africa we have no doubt will effect much ; but it will and 
must leave us an increasing black population. It is immensely im- 
portant that we duly consider the subject, and enter without delay 
upon the best measures for reforming and improving a population 



17 

which we must retain." More tlian one third of a century hag 
passed, and how stands the assumption that needs no argument ? 
The population which we hegan to remove has since then doubled 
its numbers — increasing very nearly in the same proportion as the 
white race, with all their advantages of a multitudinous immigra- 
tion added to the natural increase. 

Let the most favorable view be taken. Let it be supposed that 
the prosperity of Liberia shall become such as to make it the great 
point of attraction for the colored race ; that open space shall be 
found for the multitudes eager to emigrate, and that, whether by 
public aids or private means, emigration becomes as easy as a large 
European and American commerce has made that from the British 
Isles, Avhat then can you expect ? " The British Islands in the 
year 1792 contained a population of fifteen and a half millions. At 
the present moment the population is probably not less than thirty 
millions." * 

The largest emigration which the world ever saw, finding room 
in every quarter of the globe, and borne on the wings of a uni- 
versal commerce over every sea, has but doubled the population 
from which it has flowed. If America could send to Africa with 
equal facilities, and in the same proportion, she would but increase 
the number of her Africo- Americans, and at the end of sixty years 
would find the race doubled on her hands. It is time to awake 
from the dream of removing, to the earnest and determined work 
of remedying the evil. 

All this is said in utmost friendship for the Colonization Society. 
Though it cannot remove or lessen the African population of this 
country, there are purposes which it is fitted to accomplish, and in 
its proper sphere it is worthy of all praise and cooperation. It 
may improve Africo-Americans by the responsibilities and priv- 
ileges of Liberia on the one hand, and on the other by showing that 
the welfare of the African, like the European race, must be found 
not in the wealth or station of a favored few, but in the protected 
industry of the many. It may establish a civilized and Christian 
commonwealth on the coast of Africa, which shall aid in the aboli- 
tion of the slave trade, and in extending civilization and Christianity 

* See Blackwood's Magazine, March, 1845, and New York Observer, 
March 10. 

2* 



18 

over that wide continent. If it succeed in these high purposes, it 
is impossible to estimate its worth ; and even though it were utterly 
to fail, the attempt will not have been in vain. 

It belongs to this chapter to demand room for the African race — 
room for their necessary increase and for their prosperous spread ; for 
an African as well as an American emigration ; a Southern West, 
suited to the Southern East, as well as a Northern West, suited to 
the Northern East. In a word, the territorial West cannot be dis- 
regarded in providing for the welfare of the African race. Their 
welfare is not to be secured by limiting them to their present boun- 
daries, but by giving them the same room for expansion and im- 
provement as the white race. 

How this can be done in regard to the present slaves, or even the 
present free blacks, is a question not now requiring to be answered. 
We only demand at present, as a necessary condition of their well- 
being, room for expansion in connection with the white population 
of the South — a belt of both races from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
now that both are to be considered as equally settled in the land. 

The great southern statesman was right, not only in view of the 
welfare of the masters, but of the slaves, in claiming that the African 
race shall not be shut up within its present limits — that the South 
shall have an emigrating West for all its people as well as the 
North. All that can be required on the other hand is, that the 
emigration from the South shall carry with it no element of misery 
which a wise benevolence can cast oflf. 



19 



CHAPTER III. 

CLIMATE AND PRODUCTIONS ; ORIGINAL AND ACTUAL CONDITION 

The African race being considered as established, and to be pro- 
vided for, chiefly on our soil, it must next be claimed that in our 
care for them we regard the climate and productions of the South, 
and the original and actual condition of the race. 

As to chmate and productions, this postulate is, of course, less and 
less needful, as we approach the line where the differences vanish. 
Applying ourselves to the comparison at distant points — to South 
Carolina and Massachusetts, for instance — it may be asserted, as 
impossible to establish northern equality at the South, under pro- 
visions and laws of nature which produce inequality ; which would 
have produced it if social equality had existed at first, and which 
would reproduce and maintain it over any enactments to the con- 
trary. Mr. Webster stated the case at Rochester in 1843, bringing 
the "West Indies into comparison with New York. The nature of 
the crops, the production in one climate of what is wanted in all 
climates, and therefore requiring to be exchanged for the necessa- 
ries of life, destine them to commercial purposes, and not to imme- 
diate use. There must be cultivation and disposal on a large scale, 
with capital and proprietorship on the one hand, and employment 
and dependence, in a word, with service, on the other. If the South 
had been settled like the North, chiefly by one race ; and had it 
begun its agriculture on the same scale of small proprietorship, the 
nature of the case would at length have brought to pass, in degree, the 
distinction which now prevails — capital and proprietorship on the 
one hand, and dependent service on the other ; of masters and ser- 
vants. This distinction will not vanish by any change in the insti- 
tution of slavery, and any method of relief must regard it as un- 
changeable. Even if the African race could become sole possessors 
of the soil, by an equal subdivision, and with the energy and skill 



20 

of the European race, the consequence would not be northern 
equality, but southern inequality. The smaller number would be- 
come proprietors, and the larger number dependent laborers, and 
the distinction would obtain among them of masters to be honored, 
and servants to honor, as in degree in all lands, and the special 
necessity in the culture and disposal of southern productions. Even 
the North does not, cannot carry its equalizing principle through soci- 
ety, but makes and shows like distinctions in proportion as it be- 
comes in like circumstances ; i. e., wherever capital and proprie- 
torship have scope, as in the great commercial and manufacturing 
arrangements. 

This social inequality, which cannot be prevented, it is still more 
difficult to set aside. If there were not the actual necessity, there 
is the actual fact, which it is impossible to annul, not only without 
violating all the rights of property, but to annul at all. So imperi- 
ous is the actual fact, that even in northern countries it perpetuates 
itself, and admits only corrections and directions of what cannot be 
set aside. The abolition of slavery, and an agrarian law, could not 
annul what nature and Providence, what climate and time, have 
settled at the South. 

But there is also to be regarded the original and actual condi- 
tion of the enslaved race. The North is settled chiefly by the Anglo- 
Saxon race ; whether superior by nature, or not, it is needless to ask. 
At the time of their emigration, they were, at this present, they 
are, farther advanced in civilization, more enterprising and perse- 
vering, with more science and art, with more skill and capital, and 
with the advantage in the main of a homogeneous population. The 
mere abolition of slavery, with the franchises of the North, and an 
agrarian law besides, would not give to the Africans of the South, 
at the instant, what they had not when they came, and have not 
now ; what their fathers had not, and did not leave, as seed sown 
for their inheritance, viz., the enterprise, and perseverance, and skill, 
and capital of the white race. No law of equal privilege could 
remove the actual difference, any more than it could have removed 
the actual diflference between the inhabitants of Great Britain 
and of the coast of Guinea a hundred and fifty years ago. In a 
word, if slavery has hindered the well-being of the slaves and of the 
whole South, it is not slavery merely. In degree at least, it is a 
lower civilization ; a greater barbarism and poverty at the starting- 



21 

point of emigration. The South less blessed than the North, because 
slavery has cursed them ! and ready to be as blessed the moment 
slavery is abolished ! Strange delusion ! which forgets that almost 
half the population of the South were African barbarians, without 
enterprise, and perseverance, and skill, and capital, and therefore a 
dead weight, almost, upon the land which they came to inhabit. 
Many of the disadvantages of the South would have existed, if her 
African population had been free from the first ; and would remain 
and grow, if an ill-advised and ill-regulated freedom were now to 
be bestowed. 

Let it be supposed for a moment that the immigration of the south- 
ern negroes had been free ; that the colonists from Africa, lii<e the 
colonists from Europe, had come of their own accord, yet with the 
diflercnce in fact existing between the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of 
Great Britain and the inhabitants of the coast of Guinea. Can it 
be supposed that mere freedom would have put them and their pos- 
terity on an equality with the white race, and have given to the 
•whole unhomogeneous South equal advantages with the homogene- 
ous North? Must not the great mass of the African race have been 
"held to labor" by the race which was most advanced at the start- 
ing-point, and have found in that doom their best advantage ; and 
the surest misery if they neglected or refused the boon ? Nay, un- 
less early and wise precautions had been employed, must there not 
have been a disadvantage to the State from the discordance of its 
original settlers ? Would the African race have been at this mo- 
ment an equal pillar of the public weal with the one half of the 
homogeneous people of the North ? Surely it is not slavery alone 
which requires to be remedied, but evils which came with the race, 
and will remain after any mere decree of abolition, and which 
require a remedial code suited to the actual case. 

The disadvantage supposed, even with a free African emigration, 
must of course have been enhanced by the special differences of the 
two races ; such that they could not readily mingle and become 
homogeneous. No matter which race be of superior mould ; it is 
enough that they are unlike — that the African is not equally agree- 
abl'> to the European as his own blood, for other reasons besides 
color, in which they do not differ greatly from the straight-haired and 
fine-featured people of the East. The physical characteristics of 
the negro must have aided in dooming him to servile employments, 



22 

in fixing him in the lower stratum of society, and at the same time 
in putting the whole southern community under the disadvantage 
of an unhomogeneous people, requiring peculiar remedies. 

Nay, more ; so certain is the operation of natural causes, that we 
may safely say, if the North had been under the same disadvantage 
of settlement, and had thence inherited even a free African popu- 
lation in the proportion of one third, neither that one third, nor the 
uncongenial mass, would show the present North as it now stands, 
in contrast with the present South. The contrast between Ohio and 
Kentucky, between New England and the Carolinas, had not been 
then as now. Millions of free blacks, free from their very emigra- 
tion from the barbarism of Africa, with twofold as many millions 
of free Anglo-Saxons ; — who can tell what might have been the 
disadvantage to either or to both ? whether more or less than slavery 
itself has brought. Who can question that the North could not 
have been the North it is, if a good Providence had not given us a 
homogeneous and a civiHzed people, with small exception, from the 
first ? And can any one think that slavery abolished, and the pres- 
ent slaves remaining free on southern soil, would put the South on 
the footing of the North ? Nay, who dares to say that a free emi- 
gration of the African race into all our Anglo-Saxon franchises and 
privileges would not hinder or blast our prosperity even now? 
" The black code of Ohio " indicates a sense of exposure — is her 
acknowledgment that a " white code " does not provide for the 
wants of an unhomogeneous mass — is the acknowledgment of the 
North that a remedial code for the South must regard the origi- 
nal and actual condition of its servile race. There may be, and 
now that the difficulty exists, there must be, sought a method of 
relief; but there is an actual hinderance at the South in the incon- 
geniality of its people. Carthage, under the disadvantage of blooda 
that would not mingle, could not cope with Rome, nor estabhsh her 
own durable prosperity.* If we are allowed to hope for the future 
well-being of the South, notwithstanding the same disadvantage, it 
is because History and Christianity unite to give us a wisdom which 
Carthage had not — the wisdom to bless, in our midst, and with our- 
selves, a people whom we cannot i-emove. 

• Arnold's Rome, Vol. II. Chap. XXXIX. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE QUESTION TURNED TO "\VELL-BEING. 

Pro-Slavery ! Anti-Slavery ! And are these the only words 
which can meet the case of the servile popuhition of the South, or 
of the mixed whole of masters and servants, bond and free ? Are 
these the only words which can give direction to our discussions, and 
must we take part for the one or the other ? 

On the one hand, does the word pro-slavery fill the desire of the 
Christian patriarch, in behalf of his family around him ? Does it 
satisfy a patriarchal State? Is the institution in its actual form, 
slavery as it is, so truly and completely patriarchal, as to be worthy 
to be retained and cherished, with whatever woe as well as weal, to 
both masters and servants, now and forever ? On the other hand, 
does anti-slavery embrace all that the Christian philanthropist, all 
that the philanthropic State should seek, in order to carry out hon- 
estly and faithfully the command, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself"? Is anti-slavery, in its actual idea and programme, the 
desideratum for the enslaved race — for either race — for both races 
in their necessary dwelling together, so clearly, that it deserves to 
be the only and the headlong aim ? Nay, do the Christian j)hilan- 
thropists, do the philanthropic States of the North, see anti-slavery 
and immediate abolition in so clear a light, with so sincere an eye, 
that they are ready to welcome to their own bosom a free negro 
population, in the proportion of one third or one half of the whole, 
without question as to the boon or the burden ? as to the help or 
the hinderance of their future prosperity ? as to the advantage even 
of that third, or moiety, itself? 

Anti-slavery ! pro-slavery ! Is it absolutely settled that the par- 
ties who reproach each other with these names can have no other 
relation but as opposites and enemies ? Is there not something to 
seek after, ay, and to find, which neither word signifies ? a question 



24 

of well-heing superseding both, above and beyond both ; in seeking 
which the Christian patriarch and the Christian philanthropist may 
earnestly and cordially unite ? 

The question, then, of well-being, and not of abolishing or retain- 
ing slavery, is claimed as the question which the Christian patriarch 
and philanthropist, which patriarchal and philanthropic States, have 
before them — a question just as open, as with regard to any other 
degraded and afflicted people on the face of the earth ; each requir- 
ing an answer in view of their whole history and condition ; suited 
at once to the great principles of justice and kindness, and to its 
own specific degradation and affliction. The question, What can 
be done for the well-being of the servile population of the South ? 
is just as free for inquiry and discussion as concerning any other 
unfortunate portion of mankind — the Hindoos, the Chinese, or the 
present inhabitants of the coast of Guinea ; each requiring an an- 
swer differing from the others, and all from the true answer for the 
Africans of the South. 

Unhappily, this question of well-being is kept out of sight amidst 
the earnest discussions of the times. On the one hand, personal 
freedom is assumed as an absolute good, and in this ^^ petitio prin- 
cipii " the great question of practical well-being is altogether over- 
looked, and with it the imperative duty, the glorious opportunity, of 
blessing the peculiar people on our hands, by pliilanthropic regula- 
tion and care ; and on the other, slavery as it is, is claimed as the 
absolute necessity 'of the slaveholding States, instead of patriarchal 
amelioration, up to the point of that well-regulated freedom in which 
philanthropist and patriarch should meet. The Christian patriarch 
and the Christian philanthropist need not be at variance, if they 
will but unite in the simple attempt to promote the well-being of 
the slaves, in and with, as its only possible condition, the well-being 
of the whole people. 

Ko doubt, in some sense, it were easier to cut all bonds and leave 
the slaves, set free, to shift for themselves as then best they might. 
But is this the method for a Christian State ? for the Christian phi- 
lanthropist and patriarch ? Can the evils of slavery be rectified by 
the mere act of release ? the mere loosing of bonds ? without pre- 
serving whatever good may at present exist, and providing that the 
future may be safe and prosperous, according to our power ? 

Admit the evil to be such that no man can rightly reduce another 



25 

man to slavery, any more than to poverty, sickness, or broken bones ; 
admit that slavery as it is, has woes more than belong to a merely 
servile condition, and demanding the speediest possible remedy ; it 
does not follow thence, that the whole condition of the enslaved 
requires to be changed, without discrimination of the evil and the 
good. You must remove the evil, but you must not remove the 
good ; you must remove the injurious and destructive, but you must 
not remove the beneficial and conservative. 

This duty of holding fast the good and casting off the evil only, 
is made imperative by manifest disabilities in tlie people whose well- 
being we seek ; with the inheritance of less enterprise, and energy, 
and perseverance, and skill, and capital, than the Saxon race ; nay, 
with less capacity of available labor than the myriad crowds from 
European lands, and incapable of competing with Irish and German 
toil. Have we nothing to do but to cut their bonds and leave them to 
themselves ? Can we turn them off to be underbidden and overridden 
and oppressed, to be driven out before skill, and capital, and labor, 
miserable and destitute, to find their only relief in wasting from 
the earth, like the aboriginal freeman, the red man, before them ? 
Can we release, not merely the slave from his master, but the mas- 
ter from his slave ? Can a Christian State, philanthropic and patri- 
archal in very truth, release the master from his slave, without 
securing to the slave his labor and his pay ; or the slave from his 
master, without securing labor for pay ? A Christian State, phil- 
anthropic and patriarchal, is bound to abolish just so much of 
slavery as it is, as is injurious, and no more ; to retain just so much 
as is beneficial, and no less ; seeking in very deed the well-being of 
the enslaved race, and that common good in which alone their wel- 
fare can be found. 

The Christian patriarch then, the patriarchal State, instead of 
cleaving to slavery as it is, will inquire if there are not points in 
which woe can be made less, and weal advanced ; points of Avell- 
being to be regarded, wliich secured would change the meaning of 
the odious word, and exalt the slaveholder into a Christian patriarch. 
The Christian philanthropist also, the philanthropic State, instead 
of abolishing the institution, is bound to inquire whether emancipa- 
tion at the instant, without conditions, will prove the remedy it 
seems ; whether it might not abolish good as well as evil, and bring 
evil as well as good ; might not miss points of well-being to the utter 
3 



26 

failure of the philanthropic intent ; whether, slavery abolished and 
the slaves made free, those freemen might not find a doom which 
would crave the boon of a truly patriarchal slavery ? The question 
is on things, not words ; on substantial blessings, not empty names. 
Change the condition of the slaves into well-being ; make slavery 
truly patriarchal, and the name will suit its meaning to the change. 
Emancipate the slaves into the freedom of the North, into competi- 
tion with Anglo-Saxon enterprise, and energy, and skill, and capital, 
backed by European labor without count, and African freedom may 
come to mean the extremity of want and woe. The slaves deserve 
a better boon than such a freedom. Their rights forbid such a wrong. 
Their claims upon the soil require to be secured in the union of phil- 
anthropic and patriarchal care. 

I cannot see that this claim of a right care and direction to be 
preserved, while all wrong cai-e and direction are set aside, is at all 
forbidden by the fact that the negro race were brought into bondage 
by unquestioned wrong doing on the part of our predecessors, or 
even had it been by ourselves. If a piratical corsair, in mid-ocean, 
were to be visited by a Christian repentance, it could not demit all 
the authority with which it found itself invested, but would retain 
what was needful for the safety and welfare of its captives and the 
common good of all — the power to navigate and govern the ship, 
and bring her and her inmates to the haven. Christian repentance 
would forbid the giving up the ship to incompetent navigators, or 
the mixed society on board to anarchy and misrule. A repentant 
pirate would retain charge, and maintain authority ; would give up 
the injurious and destructive ; would preserve the beneficial and 
conservative. 

But this demand of well-being is not to be understood as requir- 
ing security from all evils. That were a claim beyond not the doom 
only, but the needs of man ; beyond the merciful intention to make 
this world a school of discipline. Tliat were to contravene the de- 
cree, and the consolation, and the direction, and the benediction ; 
" In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread ; — The poor ye 
have always with you; — In this world ye shall have tribulation ; 
but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world ; — Faint not when 
thou art rebuked ; — Bear ye one another's burdens ; — Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have 
done it unto me." No law of man, no preventive arrangement, no 



27 

binding or loosing can set aside what God designs of want and suf- 
fering, and mutual aid and relief. Hunger, and thirst, and naked- 
ness, and sickness, and calamity, and the care of providing for them, 
will remain, changing and interchanging in the most Christian com- 
munities, under the best productive and preventive regulations, phi- 
lanthropic, patriarchal, to the utmost point ; and this too, how far 
soever removed from that " over population," so wont to be assumed 
as the exponent of European woes. The law of human well-being 
is not, that mutual suffering and sympathy shall cease : no, neither 
with the high nor the low ; neither with the rich nor the poor ; nei- 
ther with the master nor the slave. The rich are not exalted 
above — in many respects are exalted into wants and woes ; the 
poor, whether they be few or many ; the " masses " of the poor, are 
not depressed below the common ground of trial and of sympathy ; 
giving as well as receiving relief. Such is human lot for human 
good ; for the trial and strengthening of the suffering and relieving 
alike ; for the forming of character, the true boon of this life, and 
the true preparation for the life to come. Neither the giver nor the 
receiver of the cup of cold water shall lose his reward. 

Neither does our claim of well-being require release from all 
bonds. The principle, It is not good for man to be alone, belongs to 
all right, and to all rectified human obligations. The high cannot 
say to the low, the low cannot say to the high, the slave cannot say 
to his master, the master cannot say to the slave, I have no need 
of thee. The State has no wisdom, skill, nor power, that it can 
make its members free of each other. No decree, no law, can make 
man free of man, save by binding man to man, in mutual obliga- 
tions. Bonds maJce free. Freedom from all bonds is the worst 
slavery. No community can make its members free, break what- 
ever fetters, abolish whatever slavery it will, without retaining the 
bonds which unite men to each other ; can emancipate the parts, 
without regarding the rules by which the whole can have a health- 
ful subsistence. No community can make its members free to bread 
without the sweat of the brow ; to wages, to " a living," without work ; 
nor its casual or providential heads, its hereditary or its moneyed 
aristocracy, its lords, its masters, its employers of every grade, 
to be served without rendering a reward ; to retain their capital 
without making it fulfil its proper function of providing labor and a 
living to their fellow-men ; to luxurious enjoyment of the fruits of 



the earth without equalizing those fruits according to the relation in 
which they stand to their kind. The presumptuous franchise will 
destroy itself. 

These great principles cannot be set aside in attempting a Re- 
medial Code for the South. There are bonds to be retained on the 
master as well as on the slave, on the slave as well as on the mas- 
ter. The question is, "What is for the well-being of the people ? 
whether by bonds retained or by bonds loosed. Bonds make free, 
be they but righteous bonds. Freedom enslaves, if it be an un- 
righteous freedom. The poet's lesson, Be bold, be bold, reiterated 
and yet corrected. Be not too bold, may be applied to the indiscrim- 
inate and absolute claim for freedom. Be free ; be free ; be free ; 
cannot be properly claimed of any people, save with that regard to 
its condition which shall give meaning and importance to the cau- 
tion, Be not too free ! 



CHAPTER V. 

AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS WITH BARBARISM. 

In aid of our demand that well-being shall be the question, cer- 
tain comparisons force themselves upon our consideration. 

And first, of the Africo-American icith the aboriginal African. 
Unquestionably Slavery, with its bonds upon the master and the 
slave, has afforded some fjicilities for promoting the well-being of 
such a people, for forestalling evils, for securing advantages which 
neither their native freedom nor an unconditional emancipation can 
give. Without withdrawing one iota from the just condemnation 
of the slave trade, the enslaving which began our woes, or of 
slavery as it is, it may be boldly claimed. That the facilities afford- 
ed by slavery have, notwithstanding its great and crying evils, actu- 
ally improved and exalted the race. If still sufTering from the 
barbarism from which they sprang, and therefore requiring methods 
different from the Anglo-Saxon race, most certainly they are not 
the barbarians they were ; are not the barbarians which their Afii- 
can contemporaries are. African barbarism remains what it was 
two hundred years ago. African barbarism, translated and enslaved, 
has changed into comparative civilization, by the advantages and 
notwithstanding the disadvantages of slavery. The African of 
America is not so degraded as in our forgetfulncss we allege ; but 
has made large advance beyond the African barbarian from Avhom 
he sprang ; beyond his cotemporary of the Coast of Guinea. The 
free African " kept down," " prevented from rising," by the influ- 
ence of slavery, as is asserted ; nay, the well-bred slave himself, 
and even the mass of Africans, bond and free, have actually risen 
far above their original degradation ; have actually become more 
capable of labor, more industrious, more vigorous, more persever- 
ing, more skilful, wiser, than their cousins of Congo and Benin. 
Your educated preachers, your learned slaves, your eloquent advo- 
3* 



30 

cates of emancipation, and, as truly, your diligent and faithful 
slaves in the field, and the house, and the shop, and the counting- 
house also, and your multitudes of thriving, discreet, capable Free 
Blacks, many no doubt in the lower, but not a few in respectable 
stations of life, give proof of the assertion over all the land. Af- 
rica in America is superior to aboriginal Africa. " The colored 
man is not a savage," says Dr. Channing in aid of his argument 
for freedom, " to whom toil is torture. Labor was his first lesson, 
and he has been repeating it all his life." The pleas for emancipa- 
tion are grounded in part upon capabilities which slavery has pro- 
duced. 

This superiority claimed for the Africo-American, how does it 
show itself, now that he is carried back to the land of his fathers ! 
America in Africa is superior to the proper Africa itself, and is giv- 
ing proof of it before Europe and America, in a community capable 
of self-government, of regular industry, of the arts of civilization, 
of maintaining institutions of education and religion, of laying foun- 
dations and building thereon, of principles and progress. Says the 
Rev. J. Payne, Episcopal missionary at Cape Palmas, " The Amer- 
ico-African colonists, \tith all the disadvantages to which their social 
condition in the United States subjected them, are, to say the least, 
a century in advance of their heathen neighbors. Colonists till al- 
ready every civil office in Liberia, the higher ones most ably ; why 
should they not, also, in time, fill all in the church ? " * Says Rev. 
Mr. Miller, before a committee of the House of Lords, explaining 
the comparative advantage of Liberia over Sierra Leone with a 
much smaller expenditure, " Because Liberia is inhabited by a 
class of intelligent Christian negroes, while Sierra Leone is inhabi- 
ted by recaptured Africans, who are little removed from the state 
of barbarism in which they Avere found by British cruisers." 

But without authorities : — Let any one ask himself Avhether it had 
been possible to have formed a Liberia from aboriginal Africans ? 
whether there could have been found among them the same power 
to form, and preserve, and make grow a prosperous State, as is 
found among the colonists from America, who, if " kept down " by 
slavery, have still most marvellously risen, giving proof that the 
principles by which they have been hindered, alone, are to be cast 

* African Repository, May, 1849, p. 134. 



31 

aside, while those by which they have thus risen are to be most 
anxiously preserved. In a word, let the injurious and destructive 
be removed, but hold fast and cherish the improving and conserva- 
tive ; that instead of losing what they have gained, they may only 
add to their gains whatever they have lost. 

Indeed, if in the inscrutable mystery of Providence there must 
needs be an Africo- American population — if the two races must 
needs meet in the new world ; the civilized, enterprising, perse- 
vering, skilful and rich European, and the barbarous and destitute 
African as he was, and as the present aboriginal African is, must 
we not say : It was wisely ordered, that social and political suprem- 
acy was settled with the race actually most capable of its functions. 
If the African race is to belt the South, it is well that the suprem- 
acy remains, if only it be maintained in Christian wisdom and 
kindness, with patriarchal and philanthropic care ; while yet, as in 
Liberia, there may be laid open for them chosen fields for the 
experiment of the highest social and political freedom. 

But still another comparison forces itself upon us : I mean that 
of the Aboriginal American with the Africo-American. There are 
conservative and beneficial iniluences in slavery, under which the 
African barbarian has multiplied, and become in degree civilized 
and capable of the arts of life. TJie North American Indian, left 
in his native freedom, has wasted and perished from the land of his 
fathers. 

"Would we then have enslaved the Indians in order to preserve 
and exalt them? By no means. We justify neither Las Casas, 
who proposed negro slavery in order to keep the Indians free, (for 
he did not justify himself,) nor the colonists whose wrong-doing 
prompted the mistaken kindness of the father. Neither do we see 
clearly how a beneficial conservatism and restraint could have been 
undertaken in behalf of American savages. And yet from the double 
experiment of slavery and freedom, and their contrasted issues, we 
may learn to look, where we have the power and opportunity, for some- 
thing better than unconditional emancipation, than the abolition of the 
tried and proved elements of African well-being. After having des- 
troyed (almost) the one race of barbarians because they were too free, 
we will beware of removing the bonds by which we have actually 
preserved, extended, and in very deed improved and exalted the 
other. 



32 

I know how easily it may be said, " The Indians are doomed to 
disappear before civilized men : " how easily Fate may be assumed 
as the explanation of the melanclioly fact. With like wisdom it was 
said once, Nature abhors a vacuum, until the discovery that Nature's 
abhorrence was limited to thirty-two feet ; above which. Nature liked 
a vacuum. Nature, fate, or what not, likes a vacuum of savages in 
connection with the civilized, if they be red and straight-haired, but 
abhors it if they be black and woolly-headed ! Strange freaks of 
Nature ! and strange philosophy ! How much better to say. Bar- 
barians, if they can be " held to labor," trained and ruled to dili- 
gence, order, regularity, under the example of a civilized and Chris- 
tian community, may be preserved and multiplied, and trained ; may 
grow progressively in well-being ; while freedom, idleness, and vice, 
will prove their ruin. Out of the fiction of the abhorrence of a 
vacuum, we get nothing but disappointment as we dig ; out of the 
experimental induction of the pressure of the atmosphere, how are 
we enriched with science and art ! From the fiction of a doom upon 
the Aboriginal American, comes nothing but wholesale destruction 
of savage tribes ; from the conclusions of experience, what results 
may "we gain of African well-being, belting our own land, and trans- 
planted that it may overspread Africa itself An ameliorated sla- 
very — a well-regulated freedom, call it by whichever name you 
will, with scope to aspire after the highest franchises, is the true con- 
clusion from American experiments with barbarism. 



33 



CHAPTER VI. 

EUROPEAN EXPERIMENTS WITH SERFDOM. 

I DO not forget the rebuke to which I expose myself; the jjopu- 
lar ban of the Nineteenth century upon the chiim of bonds to make 
free — of an amehorated slavery instead of unconditional abolition ; 
as if there were some magic in the number of the age. The Nine- 
teenth century indeed ! And what is there in that charmed number 
which can deliver it from the lessons of all preceding centuries — 
from learning its wisdom from all time ? which forbids it to read 
the ripened history of ages, and to find therein the lessons of present 
•wisdom ; made plain as proverbs to the intuition of the age, though 
it were in such words as ours : Bonds make free : Be not too free. 
The Nineteenth century is not to be controlled in the testimony it 
bears, in the direction it gives. Instead of requiring unconditional 
emancipation, it may be found, when its voice is fully and rightly 
heard, to require bonds retained as well as loosed. The Christian 
philanthropist must trace modern evils to their sources ; must re- 
ceive modern wisdom in its fulness, from the contributions of all 
times. When the river has refused and cast off the streams from 
every spring-head and lake, it is but a cup full or a drop. "Wliat- 
ever heedless philanthropy there be, boasting itself of new wisdom, 
is itself " behind the times." They only who welcome the lessons 
of experience have the true wisdom of the age. 

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The abolition 
of serfdom, brought about by the influence of Christianity, wanted 
nevertheless important elements of Christian wisdom. " Tlie mis- 
cry of the masses," and the concurrent misery of property and capital; 
nay, the very chaos of society ; the mutual suffering of all classes, 
and the dread of coming evils, making men's minds to fail for fear, do 
but confirm the assertion : Bonds make free. Too free a freedom 
•was bestowed upon lords and serfs together ; too many bonds were 



34 

loosed for the well-being of either, for the well-being of the whole. 
Serfs and lords woidd have been inutually more free if they had 
heen mutually more bound. Let not the paradox be hastily dis- 
carded. 

Before loosing all bonds, whether of master or slave, the Nine- 
teenth century should ask of the centuries which have gone before, 
whether, in solving its great problem, the preventive ounce may not 
prevail against the pound which modern Europe shows hindering 
or baffling cure. There can be no question that the serfdom of the 
middle ages did in degree provide food, and raiment, and shelter, 
and safety to the mass in exchange for labor, the degree varying 
according to the interests and character of the lord ; that serfdom 
gave some blessings which mere freedom would take away ; that it 
required and even secured some duties from the lords which an 
inconsiderate release might leave in neglect. If those mutual obli- 
gations which bind together the high and the low, be disregarded, 
the presumptuous franchise will destroy itself. The iniquity and 
the folly will be visited on successive generations. There will be 
" miserable masses," baffling relief, because too little " held to labor," 
and too little sustained by the laborer's hire ; and miserable prop- 
erty, also, a miserable hereditary or moneyed aristocracy, because 
property and rank did not cherish labor, did not benefit and com- 
fort the laborer. In a word, society will be less free for the want 
of mutual bonds. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of 
cure. In giving freedom to the slave, be sure that you do not 
enslave him to the " misery of the masses " of the nineteenth cen- 
tury — to want and woe. In giving freedom to the master, be sure 
that you do not enslave him to possessions which curse the possessor. 
Be sure, in your zeal, that you do not take away from the slave the 
points of well-being which bis very slavery secures ; nor from the 
master the salutary obligations of his lot. Do not release the slave 
without providing for his future support by his labor ; nor the mas- 
ter, without requiring him to yield that support for labor. 

The great social law of mutual interdependence cannot change — 
cannot be broken with impunity by the master more than by the 
slave ; by property and capital more than by labor. The law and 
the penalty are divinely declared in the imprecation of the Prince 
of Uz : * " If my land cry against me, or the furrows thereof com- 

* Job xxxi. 38. 



plain ; if I have eaten the fruit thereof without money, or have 
caused the owners thereof to lose their life ; let thistles grow instead 
of wheat, and cockle instead of barley ; " — in the prophet's warn- 
ing : * '• Hear ye this, ye which oi)press the poor, which crush the 
needy ; the Lord God hath sworn by his holiness that, lo ! the days 
shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and 
your posterity Avith fish-hooks;" — in the apostle's denunciation:! 
" Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl, for your miseries that 
shall come ujjon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your gar- 
ments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver is cankered, and 
the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your 
tlesh as it were fire. Behold the hire of the laborers who have 
reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth, 
and the cries of them which h reaped are entered into the ears 
of the Lord God of Sabaoth." The presumptuous franchise de- 
stroys itself. Surely the abolition of serfdom wanted some elements 
of Cliristian wisdom when it made property too free of obligation 
to maintain labor, and labor too free of obligation to sustain prop- 
erty ; and " miserable masses," and pro])erty encumbered with woes 
and fears, have been the consequence. 

Whatever difficulty there may be in the illustrations required, 
there are some obvious points in the condition of Europe as con- 
nected with the abolition of serfdom, to which we shall do well if 
we take heed in attempting a remedy for American slavery. In 
avoiding the points in which Christian Euroj)e has failed, we may 
find the true amelioration, the rightly-regulated freedom, the very 
method of well-being, the preventive ounce, against miseries which 
cannot be weighed. % 

* Amos iv. 2. 

t James v. 1 . 

% The refusal to entertain tlie question of -well-being, and the insisting on 
the absolute and immediate abolition of slavery, is the more remarkable in 
view of the strange projects for relief wliich the disastrous issue of the Euro- 
pean experiment hits called forth ; in view of the 7ieio slavery proposed in 
remedy of the "misery of the masses." Strange to see ! At the very mo- 
ment -when Ave are so virgent for unconditional emancipation in America, the 
miseries of the free in Europe are looking for relief to new forms of sers'i- 
tude. The great problem of European revolutionists is, IIoio to provide for 
unenslaved masses by enslaving them again ! — Avhat new chains to impose in 
order to secure the well-being of the people ! * * * Strange to see ! 



3fi 

Looking, then, to the European experiment, what learn we for 
our guidance ? 

And first, from France? from her condition before the revolution 
of 1789, producing tliat revolution, with its horror and dismay? the 
miseries of the low, and the still greater miseries of men of liigh 
estate? from the imperfect remedy under the consulate and empire? 
under the restored dynasty of 1815 ? under the revolution of 1830? 
under the volcano and burning lava of 1848, with all its issues and 
uncertainties ? Whatever may be due to other causes, who can fail 
to trace the wants and woes of the high and the low, the rich and 
the poor, the lord and the serf, as they were sixty years ago, and in 
all their varied forms, up to the present hour, to that too free a free- 
dom which for some centuries took place of the ancient serfdom, of 
the mutual bonds, which, with many evils, had secured some bless- 
ings unto all ? 

Whatever difficulties may belong to a subject so variously related, 
we may confidently refer the destitution and misery of the lower 
orders in France before the revolution, and of course the subsequent 
miseries of the higher, in part, to the too great freedom of the lords 
to live where they pleased, and how they pleased, without regard- 
ing in their place and expenditure the advantage of the laborers on 
the soil ; expending in the luxury and dissipation of the capital the 
fruits of labor, instead of with the laborer, in just payment, and 
generous oversight and care ; and to the uncertain and oppressive 



In countries more favorably situated for emancipation than our own ; where 
there was neither incongeniality of race, nor floods of immigrating labor ; 
neither the difficulty found by the ncgTo in connection with the Saxon from 
the first, nor the new flood of Saxon and Celt upon the fields of toil, per- 
sonal freedom has ended in such " misery of the masses," in such horrible 
and general destitution as makes men ask for bonds in order to an available 
freedom ; and in such misery of an hereditary and moneyed aristocracy also ; 
in such difficulties, and overthrows, and anxieties, and dismay, as have made 
the whole world stand aghast. How significant the sanction to the demand ! 
— Be not too free ; Bonds make free, — found in the new and mistaken 
elavcry, in place of the too free personal freedom which preceded. Names 
do not alter things. Words of freedom cannot make the modern devices 
other than a new slavery in remedy of the ills brought in by freedom too 
absolutely abolished — of the evils of too free a freedom. Under the plausi- 
ble names of fraternity, equality, socialism, what is called for but regulation, 
restriction, direction, bonds, in regard to labor, time, place, capital, property, 
hitherto too free ? 



37 

taxation, and restrained and discouraged industry of this neglected 
peasantry. No wonder that misery ripened upon the poor and the 
rich together, when the sweat of the brow could no longer earn 
bread, and the cries of " hire kept back by fraud " had "entered into 
the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth." In 1789, the rural laborer 
of France was declared by Artliur Young to be seventy-six per 
cent, poorer than that of England ; the French peasant not one 
fourth as well provided as the English peasant ; " less at his ease, 
worse fed, worse lodged, worse clothed — reminding one of the 
miseries of Ireland." * How soon followed the reverses due to neg- 
lectful and unjust property and capital, until they were " fished with 
hooks," and posterity, and again posterity, " with fish-hooks," for 
the violation of the great social law of mutual interdependence 
among men ! 

The like connection is to be traced in the miseries of Ireland, 
comparable in 1789 with the miseries of France, and seventy-six 
per cent, below the miseries of England ; for why, then, for why 
continuing and growing until now? For why? if not because prop- 
erty and capital have not performed their functions for labor, and 
because labor has not performed its duty to property and capital ? 
or, fixing upon two obvious points ; in part, because Ireland was not 
blessed with either advantage of the " poor laws " of Elizabeth, 
viz., provision for the absolutely needy and incapable, and the de- 
mand of labor from those able to work ; and in part because non- 
residence has defrauded labor of both wages and care. Thus those 
whom property and capital have forsaken, and who have also been 
idle and negligent themselves, have perished by thousands, almost 
without lioj)e of relief, and the abused property and capital are 
cankered in the liands of tlieir possessors, and " eat their flesh as it 
were lire." An impoverished tenantry must make an impover- 
ished aristocracy. The " evictions " of miserable thousands, and 
the horrors of enraged hunger ; valueless estates, or estates to 
which assassination and murder are entailed, may be referred, in 
part, to too many bonds loosed — too few bonds retained. 

That the principles of Irish misery may be the more manifest, it 
stands in striking contrast with Irish rveU-being, where for many 
generations property and capital have been faithful to their func- 

* "Wealth of Nations, Book HI. Chap. II. 
4 



38 

tions ; where pay has provided and rewarded labor, and where labor, 
also, has been rendered for pay. Happily the experiment of James I. 
has been called up to give wisdom to the nineteenth century for the 
recovery of an afflicted and desolate people on the better principle 
of keeping on the soil, and restoring thereon, a ruined peasantry, 
instead of substituting another people in their place. 

" It is now nearly two hundred and forty years," says Sir Robert 
Peel, " since a Sovereign of this country, desirous of making a set- 
tlement in Ireland, sought the assistance of the city of London. 
He invited their cooperation in restoring what were then called the 
ruinated cities of Londonderry and Coleraine. If there be any 
party in this country which has reason to look back with pride on 
Ii'eland, and its connection with Ireland, it is the city of London. 
It is the city of London which has done more than parliament or 
proprietors to promote the interests of that country ; which has for- 
gotten the consideration of temporary gain, which has forgone pres- 
ent interest, which has sought a compensation for these sacrifices, 
by promoting the permanent welfare of the district with which it 
was connected. I hope, after the lapse of two hundred and forty 
years, that the city of London may be enabled again to promote 
the welfare of that country. It will act now upon other views, 
more liberal — more comprehensive than before. It will not seek, 
as it heretofore did, to expel the natives from the soil. It will seek 
to elevate their character, to encourage their industry, to find for 
them permanent employment, to instil the principles of order, of re- 
spect for the laws, of submission to authority." " But for Ulster," 
says the London Times, commenting on Sir Robert Peel, " but for 
Ulster, we should scarcely have hope. The estates of the city of 
London are an oasis in that social and almost physical waste. The 
cost of the plantation probably did not exceed the contributions of 
London alone, to one year's expenses of the Revolutionary war. 
But the work still endures, flourishes and expands. * * * It bids 
fair to last out the world, so that to the end of time, a cultivated 
country and a prosperous people will be a living record of the 
plantation of Ulster under James I." 

If the peasantry of England might be deservedly ranked far 
above that of France in 1780, or of Ireland at this moment, there, 
also, without question, those mutual bonds needful to make freedom 
avail to the personal and social well-being of all classes, fail in de- 



gree ; while, nevertheless, the better condition of the lower orders 
in England, and of England on the whole, is due in part to mutual 
bonds retained. There may be a question, indeed, connected with 
the " poor laws " of Elizabeth, whether a too certain and easy claim 
upon the property and capital of the country may not in some 
degree have promoted the pauperism for which they intended only 
to provide ; but there can be no question that those laws, along with 
a better encouraged industry,* were bonds on property and capital 
— on the aristocracy, on the masters in favor of the released serfs 
of earlier times ; such as have made the peasantry of England for 
centuries, in better condition than that of either France or Ireland. 
Tliis advantage is due partly to direct relief; partly to an indirect 
influence stimulating the people to provide for themselves, and 
partly, perhaps, to the tendency of this tax upon property to pre- 
vent non residence, to promote residence, and tlius to add sympathy, 
and counsel, and care, and voluntary aid, and an advantageous ex- 
penditure, to the provision furnished directly by the laws. 

If this asertion be just, how much more would its justice appear, 
if, with the bonds on property and rank, there had been enforced 
the bonds on labor, also, for which those same "laws of Elizabeth" 
provided. In the words of Blackstone, their object was, not only 
" First, to raise competent sums for the necessary rehef of the 
poor, impotent, old, and blind, and such other, being poor and 
not able to work ; " but also, " Secondly, to provide work for such 
as are able and cannot otherwise get employment," or in other words, 
" to relieve the impotent poor, and them only, and to find employ- 
ment for such as are able to work." " But this latter part of the 
duty," adds Blackstone, " which according to the wise regulations 
of this salutary statute, should go hand in hand with the other, is 
now most shamefully neglected." f If both parts had been duly 
observed, how truly would thei'e have been mutual bonds on prop- 
erty and labor, that both might have been thereby more free : — a 
substitute for the advantages of serfdom, and the care of the mon- 
asteries, by which all the members of society would have been ben- 
efited ; worthy the commendations of the great commentator on the 
English law: — "A plan was formed in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
beth, more humane and beneficial than even the feeding and cloth- 

* Alison's Europe, Chap. II. f Commentaries, B. IV, Chap. YII. 



40 

ing of millions, by affording them the means, with proper industry, 
of feeding and clothing themselves : " * the whole on the great prin- 
ciple of these papers, of mutual bonds in order to mutual freedom ; 
thus stated by Blackstone in connection with these laws of Eliza- 
beth : " There is not a more necessary, or more certain maxim in 
the frame and constitution of society, than that every individual 
must contribute his share, in order to the well-being of the commu- 
nity ; and surely they must be very deficient in sound policy who 
suffer one half of a parish to continue idle, dissolute, and unem- 
ployed, and at length are amazed to iind that the industry of the 
other half is not able to maintain the whole." 

The lesson is plain ; — What might have been done easily with the 
ounces, has become impossible since they have grown to pounds and 
to tons. Or, varying the figure ; what might have been done with 
the sapling, is impossible with the full grown and gigantic trunk. 
"What Europe could have prevented by due bonds on property and 
labor, when both were in the manageable state of the middle ages 
— what she might have done by an ameliorated serfdom, must be 
utterly beyond her power when all the facilities of the ancient sys- 
tem have passed away, and the work to be done has increased a 
thousand fold. The full grown miseries of centuries will not b.e 
removed by forces which might have availed in their infancy. 
The ancient oak will not be handled as if it were a sapling. 

And now, summing up the examples referred to in this chapter 
and the last : — the improvement of the African race, under certain 
advantages, amidst the disadvantages of slavery ; the deterioration 
and wasting away of the American aborigines, under certain disad- 
vantages, amidst the advantages of freedom ; and the " misery of 
the masses," with the concurrent misery of property and capital in 
Europe, for the lack of mutual bonds, illustrate the assertion — 
Bonds make free ; and justify the all important claim, that well- 
being shall be the question with regard to the slaves and masters 
of the South, whether by bonds loosed or bonds retained. The 
proprietor, the capitalist, the lord, the master, may " do what he will 
with his own," may live where he will, and how he will, only with 
due regard to the laborers who depend upon him ; or his freed 
wealth shall be worse to him than wholesome poverty itself. The 

* Commentaries, B. lY, Chap. XXXIII. 



41 

ancient serf or the modern slave may be made free of whatever 
bonds, and yet only in due regard to property and capital, to pro- 
prietor and capitalist, the natural helpers of labor, or his freedom 
"vvill be less desirable than an ameliorated slavery. The presump- 
tuous franchise of labor without pay, or pay without labor, will des- 
troy itself. 

If this view be just — if bonds were needful to be retained, hun- 
dreds of years ago, when the liberty given was that of Europe, how 
much more now, when the emancipation proposed is into personal 
and political liberty, as it exists, full grown, on American soil. 

Granted, that the freedom of the North, personal and political, 
inherited from our P^nglish ancestors two hundred years ago, and 
full grown since, on the soil of the New "World, is fitted to its place 
and peo[)le, and that it can even assimilate a multitudinous Euro- 
pean emigration, so perfectly, that from age to age we shall be a 
homogeneous Republic, with no portion of the assimilated mass 
incapable of co-acting with the whole : — 

Does it follow thence, that even the nations of Europe in their 
place, and with their people — above all, does it follow that a race 
so different as the Negro, can be thus made free ? — that such a free- 
dom could be established and maintained ? — that such a freedom 
would not become their worst bondage ? Does it follow that we 
can decree our freedom to them, as they have been, and are ? that 
we can emancipate them into what we enjoy ? that we can make for 
them in a day what God has made for us in centuries ? that it can 
be theirs, until, as with us, it unfold itself as the slow growth of 
ages ? that with us they can retain it, or if we were to vanish from 
the soil, could hold it for themselves? Miserable delusion! to think 
that you can call forth the full grown and solid oak, except by the 
process by which the acorn unfolds and strengthens itself, year after 
year, and age after age : — to take the last result of centuries of dis- 
cipline, and expect to build it up in Europe by a three days' emeute, 
or among three millions of Africo- Americans, by some decree of 
enfranchisement, some day of universal emancipation. Better far 
if that boon can be found, an ameliorated slavery, which shall prove 
itself a well regulated freedom ; better, far, to deal with the ounce?, 
than to hazard the pounds and the tons, which no strength can lift ; 
to handle the sapling, than to wait for the full grown and enormous 
trunk of the twenty-second century. 
4* 



42 

The writer does not presume that he has accomplished the grand 
desideratum. His utmost hope is, tliat he has made an imperfect 
attempt in the right line, and may render some small aid in recall- 
ing his misguided countrymen from the wrong lines designated 
by the terms " pro-slavery " and " anti-slavery," from mutual 
reproaches about opposite impracticables, to union in seeking a 
practical good. He invokes the wisdom of the country, philan- 
thropic, patriarchal, to the utmost point, to perfect a method of well- 
being for the slaves, in and with the well-being of the European 
race — a method of well-being for our whole country, suffering and 
blessed together, in the suffering and blessing of each several mem- 
ber of the united body. 

With this hope, how might the philanthropist and patriarch weep 
in bitter repentance over the long refused opportunity — the long 
delayed wisdom ! What if this had been the attempt of the last 
twenty years, not to abolish slavery ; not to set the slave free of his 
master, or the master of his slave, but whether by binding or loos- 
ing, to promote the well-being of both and of the whole — the Nine- 
teenth century drawing this wisdom from all previous time. What 
if the Christian philanthropists of the North, and the Christian 
patriarchs of the South had united in this good attempt ; instead 
of clamor and anti-clamor, and jar and discord, making sweet 
harmony through all the land. How then may we suppose the 
evils of slavery already removed, and the blessings with slavery 
retained ; freedom established which is freedom indeed, suited to the 
actual condition of both races, of which we have said. Bonds make 
free ; the thing without the name, against and above all counter 
names ; liberty, equality, fraternity, in all the real good which those 
abused words can suggest ; without the anarchy, and overthrow, and 
bloodshed, and anxieties, and dreads, in the train of a false and flat- 
tering philanthropy ; a pattern to the European world, in recovering 
from the miseries of too free a freedom, and giving to the Nine- 
teenth century a glory which should not pass away. * * * 

If we find a method for the well-being of slaves and slaveholders, 
it may suggest a method for the well-being of " miserable masses," 
so true to the law of mutual interdependence, so true to the unal- 
terable relations of property and labor, as shall repair the damage 
of too free a freedom, and bless all orders of society together 
" Bonds that make free " may come to be encouraged by American 
example. 



43 



CHAPTER Vn. 



THE RESPONSIBILITY. 



The appeal is, necessarily, to a se?ise of responsibtliiy. If tins is 
not to be found, if it cannot be roused, then discussion, illustration, 
proposal, urgency, whether in regard to emancipation or well-being, 
are in vain. Of course tlie appeal for well-being is not to be put 
down, and that for emancipation set up, on the assumption that 
there is no sense of responsibility, or that no sense of responsi- 
bility can be roused ; — that slaveholders, that the " South," are 
so absolutely selfish and unjust, so void of conscience, that discus- 
sion, illustration, proposal, urgency for the well-heing of the slaves, 
is uttci'ly useless. For ourselves, tve believe not only that there is 
an actual and fearful responsibility, in regard to the three millions 
of slaves, and the twenty millions with whom they are connected, 
and to the geometric ratio of the future, but a sense of it at the 
South, and among slaveholders to be appealed to, and to be more 
and more aroused, until the desire of philanthropist and patriarch 
shall be fulfilled in the well-being of the people, whether bond or 
free. However this may be, whatever and wherever the sense of 
it, there is a responsibility of which we are now to speak. 

And this responsibility is to God, for man. Let it be set forth as 
it is, with no diminution because it relates to Africans and slaves, 
and to those who stand to them in the relation of masters. 
The responsibility is to God, and to his perfect law : to the great 
law oi" truth, and justice, and kindness, which is to regulate the 
doing of man to man, with all the sanctions which belong to the 
breach and the observance, here and hereafter. The remedy of a 
great social evil, the provision for a great social good, is not to be 
accomplished save in reference to the highest sanctions of human 
conduct, save in reference to the supreme authority over man. 
" The wisdom of Nuraa " was not in vain, has not been in vain, in 



44 

recovering and establishing states — has been every where acknowl- 
edged, pagan though it was, as better than atheistical philosophy, 
than philosophic indifference. Let it not be supposed that Chris- 
tian nations can find an Atheistical wisdom ; can obtain a durable 
prosperity, without a conscientious righteousness. We have no 
remedy to propose, no appeal to make, which shall supersede a 
regard to the Supreme Ruler, and the supreme law. 

But there are limits to this responsibility. The astronomer is 
mad who burdens his conscience with the charge of winds, and 
clouds, and rains, and sunshine, and their influence upon the harvests 
by which man and beast must live. The philanthropist is mad who 
burdens his conscience with accomplishing his own estimate and plan 
for the well-being of his race ; who undertakes to overrule the great 
Overruler himself. The responsibility — the sense of responsibility 
claimed and appealed to, in regard to the well-being of the African 
race in and with the well-being of the whole community — is to do 
what can be done ; is for right and wise attempts, and for all that suc- 
cess which a good Providence may give. There is no responsibilfy 
for impossibilities. There is no responsibility to remove all evils, 
and secure all benefits, to equalize all conditions ; for that were a 
responsibility which exists not in regard to any nation on the face of 
the earth, and would destroy the school of discipline which God has 
appointed — would overrule the great Overruler. There are limits 
to human responsibility, and there is no responsibility beyond them. 
There is no responsibility to annul the laws of inequality in the 
varying conditions of men — to contravene the decree, " The poor 
ye shall always have with you," to be provided for by wages or by 
charity. Not emancipation from all bonds, not an Agrarian law, 
not a theoretic, not an absolute equality, are required of human 
responsibility. The Christian equalization is on the very principle 
of inequality ; suited to the varying scene of human wealth and 
want, which human discipline requires ; is made by justice and 
kindness freely moving amidst human inequalities, amidst suffering 
and relieving men ; by means of which, " he that gathereth much 
hath nothing over, and he that gathereth little hath no lack ; " in 
which the full prepare a harvest for their own necessities by sowing 
to those who are in want. There is, there can be, no responsibility 
to institute to-day, out of African elements, a British or American 
condition — to make the two divisions of population of South Caro- 



45 

lina into the homogeneous mass of Massachusetts. The responsibil- 
ity is to do what can be done for the well-being of the people as 
they are, whether by bonds loosed or bonds retained, as truth, jus- 
tice, kindness may require. 

The responsibility, thus defined and distinguished, belongs, of 
course, first and chiefly, to the slaveholders, individually and socially. 
Each master is personally responsible to do all he can, under and 
with existing laws, both in the current care of those with whom he 
finds himself charged, and in making the best possible arrangements 
for their future welfare, whether during or after his own life. 
Whatever hindrance may be found in existing laws, he is bound 
to provide against to his utmost powers. Whatever the State may 
do or leave undone, there is a personal responsibility for the inter- 
val of its delay, according to whatever powers and facilities 
remain. 

But especially society is responsible for a great social evil ; the 
State, that mysterious personality, so difficult to define, but which 
the supreme Ruler holds to account ; — not expressed by the mon- 
arch's presumption, " I am the State ; " or by the republic's pride, 
" We govern ourselves ; " — the State, which the King of kings 
knows where to find and how to reward : the boastful head and the 
boastful members having their mysterious share in the social re- 
sponsibility, whether by political action or inaction, by interest or in- 
difference, by approval or disapproval. The evil is social and politi- 
cal, and the remedy must be social and political also. The sov- 
ereign State must provide for the evils of the State ; must open the 
way for the responsible action of all its members for the common 
good. What is every body's business is nobody's. It is not enough 
to say that eveiy individual is responsible, while yet nobody is left 
distinctly and solemnly accountable. The State itself is the person- 
ality of which arrangements wise and salutary must be claimed, in 
that corporate and distinct existence by which it is a State, in whose 
unity all the members are mysteriously and inseparably joined. 

The State, then, in its corporate capacity, — government growing 
out of the necessities and moral sensibilities of men ; the child of 
the past, the nurse of the present, the parent of the future; which 
God has ordained, and which no royal presumption or democratic 
pride can wrest from His hands ; — each sovereign State is responsi- 
ble to do all that its existing constitution admits, and to adopt into 
its constitution whatever needful powers. 



46 

The State responsible, ttus, for the use and extension of its pow- 
ers, must act through official persons, its necessary organs, legisla- 
tive, executive, judicial, for and with the whole body of which they 
are the organs. Official persons, the organs of the State, are them- 
selves responsible, not as individuals merely, but as public organs, 
for all the opportunities and powers which belong to their offices 
severally, — not to their appointees principally, to their instructions 
or complaints, but to the Ruler of rulers, to do what he requires of 
them as the organs of a Christian State : 

« Among the rulers of the earth 
A greater Ruler takes his seat : 
The God of heaven, as Judge, surveys 
Those gods on high, and all their ways." 

But there are limits to the responsibility of the State, as there 
are limits to its sovereign power. It is bound to do what it can 
and no more ; what it has a right and ability to do and no more. 
Its organs, legislative, executive, judicial, are responsible only for 
what is right and possible to them as the organs of the State ; to 
act with and not against the constitution of the State whose organs 
they are ; to act, also, according and not contrary to the materials 
on which they have to act ; with and not without just consideration 
of all the relations in which they stand to the past, the present, and 
the future ; in view of all the helps and hindrances which belong 
to the nature of men, ay, and to the very kinds and classes with 
whom they have to deal, and to the nature of the State whose organs 
they are — at once the child of the past, the nurse of the present, 
and the parent of the future, — regardful of the stream of custom 
and prescription which cannot be instantly created or destroyed ; 
which cannot be turned in its present fulness into new channels, 
without ruin and desolation in its course. 

Fixing, thus, chiefly, the responsibility upon slaveholders and the 
slaveholding States, in their separate sovereignties, it must still be 
claimed that there is a responsibility beside, or else the writer has 
no claim to a hearing, — is mistaken in his deep sense of duty. No 
doubt, within proper limitations, there is a responsibility at the 
North as well as at the South, — in every northern State and in 
every northern man, — just as we are responsible for the relief of 
misery the wide world over, according to our relations and our 



47 

powers, to do what in us lies for the benefit of our fellow-men : not 
to govern where God and nature have given no authority, but in 
every way to aid and comfort in agreement with the laws of God 
and nature. There is no evil on the face of the earth which may 
not be rightly discussed, and for which just relief may not be at- 
tempted by any man on the face of the earth There is no sover- 
eign State so sovereign, no monarchy on a throne so high, no 
republic in its amassed supremacy so supreme, that it may not be 
confronted, ay, and roused, and reclaimed, and blessed by " that 
same poor man." The humblest American may speak to the proud- 
est of the American States. Man to man may speak fur man, 
under no other restrictions but to speak the words of truth, and 
justice, and kindness, as a Christian philanthropist, and no man 
or people has the right to gainsay. Homo sum, humani nihil a 
me alienum puto. 



43 



CHAPTER VIII. 

IRRESPONSIBILITY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Responsibility there is, no doubt, as ujion every citizen, so upon 
the United States, to do what in us lies for the Avell-being of the 
whole South, but " not to govern, where God or nature has given 
no authority ; " not to do, what in us does not lie, to regulate or 
abolish slavery in the States. These assertions are presumed to 
agree with the general sentiment of the country, and yet there are 
not wanting scruples and evasions, pretensions and attempts, which 
require that the irresponsibility of the United States should be care- 
fully stated and illustrated. And this not only to check useless in- 
terference, but to quicken the sense of the actual responsibility. If 
the responsibility is not on the United States, it is ti-emendously 
upon each separate State. The plea against action in the General 
Government does not lighten the charge of three millions of men 
and their posterity, which Divine Providence has laid upon the 
responsible States — is /or action "with no diminution because it 
relates to Africans and slaves," " not indeed to loose all bonds, but 
whether by bonds loosed or bonds retained, to seek their well-being 
in and with the well-bemg of the whole people." 

Still deferring our conception of the detail, our view of a Reme- 
dial code ; nothing can be more certain than the necessity of some 
specific and appropriate legislation for a peculiar race settled with 
us beyond removal, some great and comprehensive measure of Po- 
lice. Such a legislation, at once merciful and just, regardful of 
property and labor, suited to man, providing for the well-being of 
both races, worthy of the Christian philanthropist and the Christian 
patriarch alike, how would it prove the glory of the South and the 
joy of the North ; the oil of gladness and the dew of refreshing 
upon an indissoluble Union ! 

In the hope of contributing to this result we proceed to state and 



49 

to illustrate the irresponsibility of the United States. We dis- 
claim, then, utterly, all right in the United States to interfere with 
the separate States as to slavery. Whatever the duties of the 
States may be in their separate sovereignties, these are not the du- 
ties of the United States ; not more than they are the duties of any 
other government on the face of the earth ; not more than of Great 
Britain or France. Of course, the Congress of the United States 
has no duty of interference, more than the British Parliament or the 
French Legislative Assembly ; and the citizens of the United States 
as citizens, have no duty of interference more than the citizens of 
Great Britain or France. We have not even the "right of peti- 
tion " thereon : i. e. we have no right to move the United States to 
do what they have no right to do. The right to petition cannot ex- 
tend beyond the right to act. To petition Congress in the matter, 
would be as inconsistent and absurd as to forward petitions to Lon- 
don or Paris. Be the evil ever so great, be the duty of the sepa- 
rate States ever so imperious, whether of abolition or amelioration, 
neither Washington, London, nor Paris, can be urged to interfere. 
AVhatever the evil or the wrong of slavery, God has given the Uni- 
ted States no authority in the matter. The great Overruler has so 
overruled as to limit our right and our power, as to prevent our re- 
sponsibility. 

Tliere are two questions concerning the responsibility of the 
United States. The one as under the Constitution, the other ix?. for 
the Constitution itself, and for whatever alterations. It is not 
enough to say, we are not responsible under the Constitution, unless 
we can also say, we are not responsible for the Constitution. All 
that regards the former question will be sufficiently considered under 
the latter. 

We are not responsible then, for giving to the Slave-holding 
States the powers they have. We did not give what we might 
have kept. We are not continuing what we have the right and 
power to reclaim. There is an illusion in the popular phrase, 
" the compromises of the Constitution." Neither the North 
nor the South seem to understand that their relations to each 
other were not their independent choice ; that they exist not at 
their pleasure, that tlrey cannot be altered at their will. Tlie 
Constitution is not a guilty compromise in regard to slavery, to be 
repented of and set aside by the North ; is not to be held fast at 
5 



50 

the South, as a charter by mutual consent, but is to be retained by 
both, as a conformity to our actual condition ; to the grounds and 
necessities of our political state. The national sovereignty not 
only finds no responsibility in those delegated powers by which it is 
constitutionally sovereign ; but it finds none in those circumstances, 
those progressive events above human foresight or control, produc- 
ing and illustrating its powers and limitations, and by which the 
" powers that be," the united and separated sovereignties, " are or- 
dained of God." A glance at the divine work in forming the 
American Union in the harmony and distinction of National and 
State sovereignties, cannot fail to illustrate the subject. 

The arrangement, then, of limited supremacy in the central gov- 
ernment, and of separate state sovereignties in all but delegated 
powers, peculiar to the United States of America, is no device of 
man, no new work of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, but the 
marvellous and mysterious work of Providence, then happily ac- 
cepted. " The powers that be are ordained of God." His overru- 
ling Providence settles where the responsibility lies ; who are irre- 
sponsible. The American arrangement — not our work, but His 
— has grown out of the Wittenagemot of Britain, a thousand years 
ago ; out of the wisdom of Alfred and the folly of John ; out of 
Anglo-Saxon privileges reclaimed in Magna Charta; out of the 
Parliaments of Tudors and Stuarts ; out of the controversies which 
prevailed, and the principles and sentiments which were ripening at 
the settlement of the Anglican New "World ; out of the House of 
Burgesses of Virginia, 1619, the first copy of the British Constitu- 
tion in the West ; the first germ of another England in America, 
in which the people beheld among themselves an image of the Bri- 
tish Constitution, which they reverenced as the most perfect model 
of government ; * out of the self-made commonwealth, debarked 
from the Mayflower at Plymouth, 1620; out of the charters of 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and the reclamations 
of unchartered colonies ; out of the determination of the States, 
through all difficulties, to hold the inalienable privileges of English- 
men, to govern themselves "on the principles of the British Parlia- 
ment in each separate colony ; and finally, out of the circumstances 
by which they were wrought at once into method and habits of in- 

* Bancroft. 



51 

dependent action, and into an incipient and growing unity. That 
they were offsets from England, made tliem partakers at their de- 
parture and in their settlement " of all the rights and privileges of 
Englishmen ; " and that they were planted in the midst of savage 
tribes prompted by European enemies, made of necessity each Co- 
lonial Legislature supreme in the highest act of sovereignty — in 
war — waiting neither for one another, nor for Great Britain itself. 
That their exposure was common to all, and that their enemies had 
a bond of union in their connection with a great European power 
and by the waters of the West, suggested and required a union 
practical and substantial, ever progressing towards a unity in form. 
Each colony became thus another England, and yet all so situated 
with reference to peace and war as to force the many Englands 
for common purposes into one. The absolute power of chartered 
companies or grantees under the Crown, and of the royal Duke 
himself — the British throne — Parliament — did not, could not, 
withstand the force of circumstances, the work of Providence, the 
ordinance of God, preparing separate sovereignties for union in 
common purposes under a limited supremacy. 

As union grew into form, how, from the earliest periods, was 
State supremacy at once maintained and yielded, until the slow but 
sure work of Providence produced our actual Union, as expressed 
in the Constitution ! " Danger taught the colonies the necessity of 
union; and on the first day of May, 1G90, New York beheld the 
momentous example of an American Congress," by the concurrence 
of other colonies with the proposal of Massachusetts, thus early 
preparing " the forms of independence and union." * 

"The Commissioners at Albany, 1754, were unanimously of opin- 
ion that a union of the colonies was necessary for the common 
defence against the French and Indians." Such, before the Revolu- 
tionary struggle, were the germs of union ; not of the confederation 
of 1781, but of the Constitution of 1787; springing up from the 
original circumstances and condition of the country — from prov- 
idential direction. As the revolutionary struggle advanced, how, in 
like manner, were State supremacy and central direction still grow- 
ing together, and still tending to that distribution of powers of which 
the Constitution is the literal expression ! The actual assembhng of 

* Baucroft. 



52 

nine colonies, with the concurrence of others, at New York, Octo- 
ber, 1765, and their "agreement on a declaration of rights, and on 
a statement of grievances ; " the general Congress at Philadelphia, 
September, 1774, the whole uniting in the claim of "free and ex- 
clusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures," 
and tliis in right of emigration, as " free and natural-born subjects " 
of the " realm of England," and its subsequent acts of sovereignty 
for the common defence ; the imperfect convention acceded to in 
1781, retaining too much State sovereignty, and leaving too little 
with the common head ; declining the unity for which Providence 
had provided of separated sovereignties under a single sovereignty, 
and thereby requiring its renewal and its establishment; and finally, 
the actual settlement of the present Constitution in 1787, not in com- 
promise of opposing claims, but in conformity with the provisions 
of Nature and Providence, with the ordinance of God ; — all these 
were but so many stages of development according to necessity and 
circumstances, until the Utter came to agree with the substance — 
the expression with the reality. The Constitution of the United 
States was not first made when it was voted and proffered to the 
people, but then merely unfolded and delivered as the gift of Heav- 
en, which ages had provided. Our fathers, like their fathers, in 
every stage of their progress, in all their remonstrances and dec- 
larations, claimed not new privileges, hit old ones ; not what men 
could give, but what God had given ; brought with them across the 
Atlantic, and exalting their provincial assemblies into embryo Par- 
liaments ; each new England holding of right what no king or Par- 
liament could take away. Our fathers, like their fathers, the barons 
of Runnymede, and the Lords and Commons of later times, said, for 
substance, Nolumus leges Anglice mutari : What God has given us 
must not be changed — cannot be changed. 

In aid of the progressive circumstances producing the union of 
separate and sovereign States has been the physical structure of the 
country, fitted for local governments equally, whether on the nar- 
rowest or broadest scale, — for a Virginia and New York, or a Del- 
aware and Rhode Island, — and at the same time enabling and 
requiring the combination of many into one. The first settlements 
along the Atlantic border, so widely separate as to be obliged to act 
alone, found the ocean which washed their shores a bond of union, 
enabling them to unite for the common defence. As the settlements 



53 

extended, new bonds of union were found in the rivers and lakes 
of the North, and then again in the great rivers of the West, join- 
ing, almost, the lakes and rivers of the Nortli, and binding all to 
the southern gulf; connecting the North and the South, the East 
and the West, as by the ordinances of nature itself, which cannot 
be changed. And then, as the States have grown stronger under 
the protection of the Union, how have they employed their pro- 
tected strength, not in sundering, but in strengthening and increas- 
ing the national bonds ; the States more capable of separate action 
because they were united, and employing that action in perfecting 
and establishing the Union ; binding themselves by separate acts 
of sovereignty more firmly into one ! New York building the Erie 
Canal ; Pennsylvania uniting the Delaware and the waters of the 
West and South ; and other States joining them, first in artificial 
watercourses, and now in railroads, the works of many separate 
States, overspreading the Union, bind together with new bands the 
four great quarters of the land into a still more indissoluble one. 
This view of necessary union, by means of physical condition, 
matclied by a providential work, did not fail of influence in pro- 
ducing the letter of the Constitution, and in securing the formality 
of ratification. " It has often given me pleasure," says Governor 
Jay, urging the adoption of the Constitution, in concurrence with 
JIadison and Hamilton, " to observe that independent America was 
not composed of detached and distinct territories, but that one con- 
nected, wide-spreading country was the portion of our western sons 
(if liberty. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain 
louud its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble 
rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them 
with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the 
mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities." 
Tlie effect of internal improvements by the authority of separate 
and sovereign States, in perfecting and continuing the Union, as the 
protecting Sovereign of the whole, is thus referred to by Mr. Clay, 
December 29, 1835, while yet the providential mystery of union, 
by separation, was but partly developed : — 

" Tiie States have undertaken what the general government is 

prevented from accomplishing. T/iey are strengthening the Union 

by various lines of communication thrown across and througli the 

mountains. New York has completed one great chain ; Fennsyl- 

5* 



54 

vania another, bolder in conception, and far more arduous in execu- 
tion. Virginia has a similar work in progress, worthy of all her 
enterprise and energy. A fourth, farther south, where the parts of 
the Union are too loosely connected, has been projected. These 
and other similar undertakings completed, we may indulge the patri- 
otic hope that our Union will be bound together by ties and interests 
that shall render it indissoluble." 

Thus far, most certainly, the Constitution is conformity, not com- 
promise. State supremacy in all but delegated powers, and suprem- 
acy at the centre in those powers, is GocTs ordinance, and not man^s 
device, leaving the responsibility for slavery with the States, forbid- 
ding it to the United States. The United States are not responsible 
under the Constitution, and are not responsible /or the Constititution 
against all scruples and evasions, all pretensions and attempts to the 
contrary. 



55 



CHAPTER IX. 

tJNIOX BY SEPARATION. 

The work of Providence for a thousand years ; for one liundrcd 
and fifty years from the first settlement of this country, decided the 
American arrangement of State and National sovereignties — the 
flicts, as the Constitution has expressed them in the letter. The 
force of circumstances, the necessities of our condition, inherited 
powers growing and developing in the progress of events, made the 
Constitution for us, not by us, as God's ordinance and not as man's 
device ; not by compromise, but conformity. The framers of the 
Constitution had this highest wisdom, that they perceived and ex- 
pressed what Providence had wrought. All lionor to their memory ! 
Tliis arrangement of Heaven finds illustration in the whole work 
of the States by which we became the United States above and 
against all enemies and rivals, and in the harmony of Central and 
State sovereignties as the United States. If the States had not 
been separately sovereign, we should never have become the 
United States at all ; and since we have become such, neither ab- 
sorption nor separation, neither concentration nor nullification, have 
been found to be possible. 

What, then, is it that has given the United States a place among 
the nations of the earth, as a great, undivided, and happy people ? 
How is it that the most perfect government of the European world 
has taken root and grown until it has spread itself almost from gulf 
to gulf, and from ocean to ocean ? — that a new and larger Eng- 
land has been established in America ? that we have another Magna 
Charta, parliaments, the English race, and language, and charac- 
ter, and principles, and literature, prevailing over all other Euro- 
pean claimants, over all enemies and rivals ? Is it not due to the 
separate State sovereignties that we are the United States at all ? 

Let it not be forgotten that the early advantage belonged to other 
nations ; — to France, occupying the northern and southern gulfs, 



56 

and their tributary rivers, with lines of military posts, and hostile 
tribes extending two thousand miles in our rear ; to Holland, at the 
mouth of the Hudson, the most important intermediate inlet, sepa- 
rating the English settlements from each other ; to Spain, even, 
especially when the others were no longer enemies or rivals, taking 
the place of France on the Gulf of Mexico and the rivers of the 
West, and with such hope as to establish a New Madrid almost at 
the mouth of the Ohio, as the future capital of the " Great (Span- 
ish) West." Whence came it that the English race — hemmed in 
upon the coast of the Atlantic, divided from each other by an inter- 
mediate State, shut out from the great inlets and intercourses, and 
incessantly assailed — so marvellously prevailed over all enemies 
and rivals ; nay, assimilated to themselves enemies and rivals, and 
are assimilating all other European nations into one undivided 
English people? Whence, but because at their beginning each 
State was a New England, with a parliament capable of govern- 
ment and action at every separate point of attack from that hostile 
array, and of uniting also for the common defence ? It was New 
England, for instance, with all the elements of our actual union, 
combining the forces of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecti- 
cut, and New Hampshire, which secured the surrender of Louis- 
burg, " the Gibraltar of America," June 17th, 1744. It was 
Virginia, with a constitutional life beating high from 1619, 
with a virtual sovereignty competent to devise and execute in 
regard to her Ohio frontier, which held fast to the valley of 
the west for the united whole, educating thus the " Father of his 
Country." It was the colonics, separate and combined, chiefly, 
which secured the surrender of the French posts on the western 
lakes and rivers, and the cession of Canada, 17 GO; and at length 
the whole land, from gulf to gulf, to one undivided English people, 
assimilated from all P^uropean nations, to be carried forth as one 
people, from ocean to ocean. This vast and growing nation, united 
by separation, more intimately blended into one than any other nation 
on the face of the globe — woven together by mutual relations and 
intercourse, as by the minutest threads, into one common, yet divid- 
ed unity, has been formed by means of separate States, whose 
principles of life have been the gift of a gracious Providence for a 
thousand years. We are what we are in the existing fact, because 
we were what we were in the very elements of our being. The 



57 

elements of the Constitution made the United States, not the United 
States the Constitution ; have given us our united and have left to 
us our separate responsibilities. 

And how has it been since we have been the United States ? 
Have we been able to set aside the ordinance of God whicli made 
us many, and thereby made us one ? to be less or more than sepa- 
rate sovereignties under a limited head ? Even under the conven- 
tion of 1781, when we undertook to reverse the appointment of 
Heaven manifested in that closer union, which " danger" produced 
as early as 1690, which the necessities of the "common defence" 
suggested in 1754, and which, against all reluctances of the States, 
was forced upon Congress and upon "Washington, that there might 
be one mind and action for the whole, in matters pertaining to the 
whole, — how signally we failed ! When common dangers and neces- 
eities ceased, we substituted for that powerful bond a rope of sand, 
that we might become what we had never been from the first, mere 
separate sovereignties. But did we remain so ? Could we thus set 
aside the unity which Providence had wrought for us, and which lie 
had made the condition of those single sovereignties we claimed ? 
How signally we acknowledged a bond never to be loosed, even when 
we thought we had refused to be bound at all I Strange to say ! 
That Providence which overrules the governments of men, which sees 
in the germ that which unfolds itself in the growth, which preserves 
above and beyond human forethought that which human forethought 
presumes to destroy, still kept in the minds of our fathers the sub- 
stantial idea and intention, at the very time they refused the form 
which His providence required. Claiming to be but thirteen sepa- 
rate States, under rules and methods which rendered united action 
impossible, they claimed, nevertheless, the reality and the substance 
of State sovereignties and central supremacy, for then, and for the 
future ; for the original thirteen States and for indefinite increase; 
for more and still more separate sovereignties, all becoming more 
and more united under a common head ! What else meant they 
by the motto, adopted June 20th, 1782, "E Pluribus Uxum," 
— many and yet one ; one and yet many, above and beyond all 
powers of division or of concentration, while by the letter of the 
" convention " they were many and not one ? What else meant they 
by the reverse of that national seal, — by that significant emblem, 
that devout acknowledgment, — the unfinished pyramid, compact 



58 

and firm, to become more compact and firm the more stones are 
added to the structure ; and yet not by man's device, but by God's 
ordinance, under the eye of Heaven, and with the devout acknowl- 
edgment, ^^ Aimuit Cceptis" — God has built the United States, 
and will build them more and more perfectly in one. At the very 
time when the States claimed to be many and not one, they ac- 
knowledged the indissoluble unity which Providence had wrought. 

And since the adoption of the Constitution, — the conforming of 
the letter to the arrangements of Heaven, — how remarkably has 
the ordinance of God prevailed, making still the many one, and the 
one many. The States have not been able to be less or more than 
self-regulating States, under the protection of a supreme govern- 
ment : — The United States have not been able to be less or more 
than a supreme government amidst self-regulating and sovereign 
States. Absorption and separation, concentration and nullification, 
have been alike impossible. 

Thus, in every stage of progress, before and since the Convention 
of 1787, the Constitution of the United States is God's ordinance 
and not man's device ; the wisdom of its framers is manifest, not in 
compromising with the will of man, but in conformity to the wisdom 
of heaven ; no less in what is Avithholden than in what is given, in 
what remains with the States, than in what is yielded to the con- 
federated head. In the words of Washington, applicable equally to 
a thousand years of the history of our fathers, and to more than 
two hundred from the settlement of these States : " Every step by 
which the United States have advanced to the character of an inde- 
pendent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of 
an overruling Providence." * Especially after the British Consti- 
tution was transplanted to these States, distinct and separate, and yet 
forced to both independent and united action ; — circumstances, dec- 
larations, acknowledgments, customs, precedents, common law, and 
common understanding, had settled at once State supremacy, and a 
confederated head, before the Convention of 1787, so that that Con- 
vention could not annul either — whose work was not compromise, 
but conformity to the work of Providence, which they could not over- 
rule. Nay, so absolute was that Providence, so controlling were cir- 
cumstances and events, that the Convention of 1787 could not have 

* Inaugural, 1789. 



59 

prevented, for substance, the present Constitution. Had they 
failed to form it, it would have gone on to form itself, developing and 
fixing the reality in anticipation of the letter. Nay, more ; so cer- 
tain and so determinate is the work of Providence, the ordinance 
of God, that it cannot now be set aside ; not the sovereignty of the 
States, not the supremacy of the United States. A Convention of 
185G could not annul the great provisions of the Constitution forced 
upon us three score years ago — could restore neither the separate 
States nor the United States to the nominal powers and real impo- 
tence which followed the peace of 1783 — could not make the 
United States the seat of power and responsibility for the several 
parts. Impossible attempt ! which, adopted in the form of a new 
and accepted Constitution, would disappear like the baseless vis- 
ions of the night, leaving the substance which God has ordained 
— State sovereignties and limited supremacy, as settled principles 
of the American, as Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, are of 
both it and the British Constitution; as old and not new — the 
inheritance of the past, and not the gift of the present — conform- 
ity to Providential arrangement, and not compromise with the will 
of man. Impossible attempt ! to concentrate authority so as to 
make the United States responsible for what has been the separate 
work of the States ; or so to assume State powers as to set aside 
the legitimate and prescriptive supremacy of the United States. 

And do men dream that they ought to break up what God has 
thus established without their devices, above their work — to dissolve 
the Union formed by the Providential fittings and cements of many 
centuries ? Do men dream that they can resolve, and speak out of 
being, what God has spoken into being, above all counter-plans of 
their enemies and of themselves — that they can break up that union 
by which God has provided for the highest prosperity of each sev- 
eral part, and in that prosperity, for a more powerful and wider 
unity ? What if the provisions which God wrought out in a thou- 
sand years of English and Colonial history — the work of Divine 
Providence above and against man ; what if these were set a>ide, 
as the mere letter which man's hand had written, the mere device 
and decree of the Philadelphia Convention — would they be set 
aside? Could they? What if the Union were dissolved by unan- 
imous vote, by peaceable consent, into two Unions, or three, or four, 
or into thirty sovereign States; would the Union be dissolved? 



60 

Coiilil it ? Impossible ! again and again, impossible ! Not thus can 
man contravene the " powers ordained of God " ; not thus destroy 
in a day, God's work for centuries — not thus break down the pyr- 
amid built, and still rising, compact and firm under the eye of the 
Omnipotent ! Dissolve the Union I Why, we should still lie bound 
together by the same waters, the same oceans, and gulfs, and bays, 
and rivers, and lakes, which God has given us in common ; and by 
the same canals and railroads which, under his ordinances, our hands 
have built; binding us into an indissoluble one! — bound together 
by the same necessities, and facilities of mutual intercourse — the 
same inherited and prescriptive powers of acting separately for sep- 
arate purposes, and of acting together, for purposes common to all ! 
Dissolve the Union ! Why, the Union would return upon us again, 
as it did when we attempted to dissolve it in 1781 — when we 
preferred to be parts, and not a whole — would return as it did in 
1787 — in the letter of the Constitution. 

A Convention of 1856, could it dissolve the Union ? The States 
north of Mason and Dixon's line — the States south of that sec- 
tional boundary — under whatever scruples or jealousies, can 
they recede ? Could they dissolve the Union ? We venture to 
say that if a dissolution of the Union should take place, with what- 
ever unanimity of decision or permission, that it would not take 
place ; that it would be as nugatory as the (quasi) dissolution of 
1781, which produced the letter of the Constitution. King John 
and King James may think that they can break up the Providen- 
tial arrangements which are growing into the British Constitution, 
that they can make a subservient or a despotic monarchy ; but they 
cannot. The Constitution reappears above them and against them, 
as the growth of the olden time, in a new Magna Charta, and a 
new Bill of Rights. The northern States may think they can with- 
draw from the southern, and thus only be innocent of their errors ; 
the southern may think they can withdraw from the northern, and 
thus only be safe from their interference; but they cannot put 
asunder what God has joined together. Above and agamst them, 
the Constitution will reappear, and the union of State sovereignties 
be more and more established. 

There is but one exception to this assumption. No doubt sepa- 
ration into two hostile parts is possible, at the sword's point, at the 
cannon's mouth, along the dividing line. At war, there may be a 



61 

northern and southern Union ; but as with nations naturally and 
providentially distinct, the exhaustion of war compels to peace ; 
with States naturally and providentially connected, it would end in 
reunion. On two sides of a boundary of blood, we may be for a 
season two nations, until, wearied and worn out with violence and 
rapine, we become prepared, not for peace between nations, but 
for another cycle of Union, as a great national family, — as one 
great and undivided English people, responsible as a whole for 
what belongs to the whole, and as parts for what belongs to the 
parts. 

6 



CHAPTER X. 

THE LAW OF EQUAL FORCES. 

Besides the fact that State sovereignty with union only in regard 
to matters in common, is God's ordinance and not man's device, 
and that the United States have therefore no authority in regard to 
slavery ; there is this further reason against all common legishvtion 
in the matter, that the great Overruler has so ordered the balance 
of sections, that if we had authority, it would be annulled by a 
necessary impotence. 

Owing to relative weight, to equilibrium of forces, the United States 
would be incapable of action, could never abolish or regulate slavery, 
even if they had the authority. Providence has so ordei'ed the con- 
dition of these United States, that neither the northern nor south- 
ern section can make an availing legislation against the will of the 
other. The North is as impotent as the South, the South as impo- 
tent as the North, by the law of equal forces. Sectional equili- 
brium must prevent any decisive exercise of a central authority, 
even if that authority existed. Where there is equal Aveight in both 
scales, the scales cannot be turned. Equal sections of the same 
country have only this alternative, ineffectual and injurious conten- 
tion, or to agree to differ, — submitting to inaction where there is 
no power to act. 

This equilibrium of sections, this impossibility of action, existed 
at the formation of the Constitution. Besides the inherited and pre- 
scriptive right of the States to manage their local affairs, the relative 
•weight of sections forbade sectional action. There was no power in 
either scale to turn the balance. The States south of Mason and 
Dixon's line, and the States north of Mason and Dixon's line, were 
as nearly even poised as possible, (the minute slaveholding of the 
North notwithstanding,) and from that sectional balance inaction 
necessarily Ibllowed ; useless debate giving place to leaving matters 
as they were. This inaction was inevitable, save only in whatever 



63 

points both sections could agree, as for manifest reasons they did 
upon the foreign slave trade, limited to 1808. It was not compro- 
mise, but necessity ; it was not a criminal yielding to the will of 
the South, but a providential equilibrium, which left slavery exist- 
ing by the Constitution, and would have left it even though the 
United States had possessed authority in the case, unless equals can 
be unequals ; unless equilibrium can turn the scales. 

The same principle has governed, not the action but the inac- 
tion of the United States, hitherto, in the admission of new slave- 
holding States. At every stage the previous sectional balance 
rendered that admission inevitable, — in each case inetfectual and 
injurious contention giving way to the necessary agreement to differ. 
Impossibility of action to the contrary, has preserved and continued 
the original equilibrium. The tree has only grown on both sides 
according to its former proportions. The evil may or may not be 
greater than Avould have ensued if the non-slaveholding States had 
had both authority and power to open the whole South to a free 
African population ; but how plainly the new slaveholding States 
have been admitted into the Union by necessary inaction, by means 
of previous sectional balance ! It was no more possible to rule 
slavery out of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, than to rule it 
into Indiana, Illinois, and INIichigan. The southern territory, espe- 
cially adapted to the productions and labor of the South, became 
the natural field for southern emigration, as part and parcel of the 
actual southern population, with slavery, while relative weight 
assured it to them in the Union, against whatever will or opposition 
of the North. Nay, if the North had possessed a preponderance 
jn the legislative halls, and could have passed a sectional vote against 
a large minority, the final result would not have been ditferent ; 
so impossible is it to enforce decrees against the natural course of 
population, against the habits and prescriptions, against the will and 
opposition of great sections of a country. The most determined 
vigilance of a military police, the severest penalties and the most 
rigorous execution of sectional law against one third or one fourth 
part of the Union, would have been found ineffectual, and must at 
length have yielded to the pressure. However this may be, most 
certainly it would have been impossible to have carried out any 
law against the natural progress of the South towards the West, 
while the relative weight of both sections was substantially the same ; 



64 

— for equal sections to have been any thing else but a balance to 
each other. 

The impossibility ruling at the formation of the Constitution, 
and ruling since in the increasing number of the States, rules still, 
and would prevent the action of the United States for the regula- 
tion or abolition of southern slavery, by authority, precisely as it 
would be impossible for the South to impose slavery on the 
North ; for the want of sectional preponderance. As at the forma- 
tion of the Constitution, the thirteen States were balanced upon 
Mason and Dixon's line, so that a controlling power was impossible 
to either section, so are the thirty-one States now balanced as equally 
upon the actual line which separates the free and slaveholding States. 
Granting the free States the ad\;antage in numbers, in their homo- 
geneous population, and in the vigor and activity of all classes of the 
people, the balance of the slaveholding States is found in their 
command of the great rivers of the West, and in their possession of 
the great staple of northern manufactures. So nearly equal are 
the two sections, that any absolute and decisive preponderance of 
the Nox'th is impossible. Even if the Senate were constituted on 
the same principles as the House of Representatives, and thereby 
a majority of both houses could be secured, how certain it is that no 
law of regulation or abolition could or would be enforced against the 
will and opposition of the South ! If the United States had at this 
moment constitutional authority in the premises, it would be impos- 
sible to exercise it, from relative weight, from sectional equilibrium. 
Like two nations, substantially equal, their alternative would be, un- 
availing strife, or the agreement to differ. In truth, whether enforced 
or unenforced, legislation would end in establishing that which it^ 
began to remove. 

Such being our views of the necessary results of sectional equiU- 
brium, we do not accept the common explanation of the allowance 
and progress of slavery hitherto, as by compromises between the 
North and the South, or still worse, by southern domination and 
northern subserviency. As it was not determinate action, but 
necessary inaction, which ruled in the allowance of slavery by the 
Constitution, so it was in fixing the sectional line of 3G. 30., and in 
the "treaty" with Texas. So inevitable was inaction from the 
previous equilibrium of forces, that if the North had prevailed in 
either case, by some advantage of the moment, most surely it would 



65 

not have prevailed. No sectional vote, according to northern view?, 
could have been carried out and enforced against the South. Equi- 
librium could not have given a final and settled preponderance. 
The maintenance of slavery at the South and its extension to the 
southern West, has been due, not to voluntary compromise between 
the North and South, but to the impossibility of turning an even- 
balanced scale ; not to neglect or consent on the part of the North, 
but to necessary inaction ; not to northern weight thrown into the 
scale, but to southern weight itself keeping the balance even ; not 
to an overruling South, but to equal impotence of both North and 
South against each other; not, in fine, to southern domination and 
northern subserviency, but to that relative weight which gives no 
occasion for either. 

We do not forget the claim that there should then be no United 
States at all ; that the North should separate from the South, in 
order not to be partaker of other men's sins. Not to dwell upon 
the assumption of the last chapter, that this is not left to our choice, 
— that the union ordained by the will of Providence cannot be 
broken by the will of man, — we may confidently assert that if we 
had the power to separate any member from the body, or to divide 
the body into two living parts, then there is no conceivable reason 
for doing so. What if we are so equally balanced that the North 
cannot control the South, nor the South the North ? What if we 
caimot decree and enforce, the one section against the will and 
opposition of the other, and thereby each is left to its own choice 
and responsibility in matters local and sectional ? May we then 
form no partnership in any thing, because we cannot become part- 
ners in every thing ? May we maintain no relations with men, 
uiile?;s they can be ruled by us in all relations ? May government 
be common for no purposes without being common for all purposes ? 
In fine, may not the northern and southern sections, though incapa- 
ble of ruling each other on the great sectional question, still sail on 
the same oceans, gulfs, bays, and rivers ; under the protection of the 
same forts and fleets ; and in the same relations to our own separate 
States and to other nations, by which the common opportunities arc 
preserved and the common thoroughfares of the world kept open ? 

Is there, then, no scope at the South for northern philanthrojiy ? 
Undoubtedly there is ; none the less because it must needs be with- 
out authority, where no authority exists, and without a decisive 
6* 



66 

weight where an overruling Providence has made the balances even. 
Authority disclaimed, impotence to overrule acknowledged, and the 
vain struggle of equal sections finished, there will be the freest 
scope to whatever northern wisdom and good will. "With authority 
we could do nothing, because we form but an equal section of the 
Union. Without authority, without power, as ready to check our 
mistaken earnestness as to rouse the mistaken apathy of our breth- 
ren ; as ready to learn as to teach, we shall find the whole South 
open to those fraternal councils from which priceless blessings may 
be hoped. 

Of this hope we have a striking illustration. No doubt any 
attempt on the part of the North to regulate the cultivation of cot- 
ton by a sectional vote, would have failed, if there had been author- 
ity, for the want of northern weight adequate to overrule the reluc- 
tance and resistance which the interference would have called forth. 
Nevertheless the weight of the South was no hinderance to northern 
ingenuity and industry. The necessity of leaving the care of cotton 
to the cotton-growing States, allowed yet fullest scope to northern 
invention and manufactures, as great elements of southern prosperi- 
ty. Who can tell how many times the wealth of the South has 
been multiplied by the cotton-gin of Whitney, by the looms and 
the labors of scores of Lowells and Manchesters. Let it not be 
supposed, in regard to the more important matter of their social 
condition, to the great principles of moral and political economy, 
that wise and kind reflection and suggestion will be lost upon the 
South, if in any degree they shall be found emanating from the 
North. 



67 



CHAPTER XI. 

ADVANTAGES OF STATE SUPREMACT. 

There cannot be a stronger appeal to the South than the claim 
that, whether by authority or power, by inherited rights or sectional 
equilibrium, the responsibility is theirs alone. If the North desires 
to see a remedy for slavery, let it disclaim all intention, let it dis- 
card all attempt to overrule, acknowledging its own utter impotence, 
and ceasing the vain struggle of equal sections. Instead of light- 
ening the sense of responsibility by officious interference, let the 
whole weight of it be left where it properly belongs, assured that 
the way will be more open to whatever neighborly and philanthropic 
aids. In the hope that our suggestions will be as weU received as 
they are well meant, we proceed to note certain direct advantages 
of our system of State Administration. 

1. The slaveholding States, alone, are competent to the specific 
wisdom and skill it'quired. They, only, can form and apply a Code 
truly remedial. 

It were to deny the principle on which this work proceeds, to 
assert that wisdom and skill cannot come from without. But no one 
can feel more sensibly than the writer, that all suggestions from tho 
North must be made with deference to the local knowledge and ex- 
perience of the South. Whatever Avisdom may be supposed to be 
derived from the whole experience of mankind and the history of 
races rising in the social state ; or from American experiments with 
barbarism, and the European problem of the " masses," it can be 
only in the seed, and not in the harvest, until it has been cultivated 
and ripened on southern soil. Those, only, who are intimate with 
the character and condition of the peoi)le, and with the climate and 
productions of the South, are capable of developing completely the 
principles of well-being, in application to masters and slaves — to 
the whole southern population. 



C8 

Besides, how vain were all wisdom, all devices and methods from 
without, except by cooperation from within, except with aid and 
scope given on the spot. If the northern philanthropist could prof- 
fer the maturity and the fulness of wisdom, he can do nothing unless 
the southern patriarch adopt and employ it. The wisdom of the 
cotton-gin would have been useless, if it had not been welcomed 
and applied by the growers of cotton. 

It is well, further, that the responsibility is not even sectional ; that 
the southern section cannot legislate for the southern section as a 
whole ; that each State is separately responsible. Now, any experi- 
ment must needs be tried on a small scale, with the opportunity of va- 
rying as occasion may require, until it can be made a fit model for the 
rest ; until, commending itself to the common sense and observation 
of men, it shall claim to be adopted by all. It is well, especially, 
that the responsibility is not national, and committed to divided 
councils, incapable of any other action but interminable contention ; 
nay, that it is not committed to a central power, capable of delaying 
or preventing desirable measures on the one hand, or of forcing 
those that are undesirable, on the other ; or even of carrying with 
over haste, methods which are practicable only by slow degrees, 
instead of limited and local experiments, growing at length into a 
wisdom and skill fitted for the widest adoption. 

What we mean here, may be illustrated by a reference to the 
"West Indies — to the changes produced there by a sovereign au- 
thority over, and not with them ; a legislation for them, and not by 
them ; without local knowledge and experience, and against the good 
will of the property and influence of the countr}', and yet of uni- 
versal effect. The first law — that of apprenticeship, was itself de- 
clared over hasty, injudicious, by the subsequent act of emancipa- 
tion, wliile that act done and finished, for better or worse, is rather 
claimed as good a priori, from abstract principles, than by the 
experiment itself; nay, is acknowledged or feared as a failure, by 
those even wlio aided and hailed the enactment. How disastrous 
the forced result may prove, is tlms expressed in the London Times, 
April 30, 1849: ''With a race of blacks, new to the enjoyments, 
and unschooled by the discipline of freedom, it may yet be our fate 
to see the hopes of benevolent, and the enthusiasm of religious men, 
destroyed by the hideous spectacle of a new and more barbarous 
St. Dominpro risin^ on the ruins of the British Antilles." In illus- 



69 

tration, if it be not proof, of the downward tendency of the actual 
emancipation of the British West Indies, we have tlie statements 
from Jamaica, that "the poverty and industrial prostration of that 
island, are almost incredible. Since 1832, out of the six hundred 
and fifty-three sugar estates then in cultivation, more than one liun- 
dred and fifty have been abandoned, and the works broken up. This 
has thrown out of cultivation over 200,000 acres of land, which in 
1832 gave employment to about 30,000 laborers, and yielded over 
15,000 hogsheads of sugar, and over 6,000 puncheons of nim. 
During the same period, over five hundred Coffee plantations have 
been abandoned, and tlieir works broken up. This tin-ew out of 
cultivation over 200,000 aci'es more of land, which in 1832, required 
the labor of over 30,000." "Whether these statements be wortliy of 
credit or not, they serve our present purpose of illustrating wliat 
we mean by over hasty and injurious legislation, from without, 
against local knowledge, and the good will of the property and influ- 
ence of the Slave States themselves. 

2. The wisdom of a single State has every opportunity to be ex- 
tended to other States, with such variations as the peculiar condition 
of each may require. If the separation of the States gives the fairest 
field for a safe, unexpensive, and advantageous experiment, their 
mutual intercourse affords the freest possible scope for its repetition, 
for its adoption according to its tried and proved merits, as wMde as 
the evil to be remedied. It is well that each State only has the 
power within itself to devise and to attempt, to vary and to modify, 
to begin in its weakness and ignorance, and to grow in wisdom and 
skill by well-meant endeavors, until, by the aid of Him who enables 
the simple-hearted, it may be found accomplishing the work — and 
then it is well that the way is open for the example to be followed 
by other States in like condition. The narrowness of the sover- 
eignty, incompetence everywhere, save within each slaveholding 
State, gives the best opportunity for the beginning, and the intimate 
union of the States for the Avide and rapid extension of a wise and 
successful experiment. Happy, in so great a matter as changing 
the whole condition of society, that no central authority can act 
upon the great Section concerned — can make an immediate and uni- 
versal change. Happy, if there may be found one or more among the 
States competent and concerned, so truly patriarchal as to undertake 
a method of well-being suited to the pecuUar case ; to begin on the 



70 

plainest principles of common sense, and to grow in wisdom and 
skill until it shall become a fit model for the rest. Of the advan- 
tage thus stated, we find ample illustration in the general history of 
human progress, and in the annals of our own nation in particular. 

The mechanical and industrial improvements of the age were not 
over hastily undertaken — were not absolutely hindered by central 
sovereignties, but grew up from individual devices and experiments, 
until they had attained a perfection in which they could become the 
helpers as well as the foster children of many nations. Had they 
depended upon the Parliament of Great Britain or the Congress of 
the United States, or still more upon the united councils of all civ- 
ilized nations which have adopted them, they would not have been 
so wisely made, or so rapidly and so universally introduced It was 
the smallness of the sphere, rather, which enabled successful exper- 
iment ; and when successful experiment was made, it was intimate 
connection of the parts of a country with each other, and of country 
with country, which facilitated their ready and general adoption. 
An experimental Watt, proffering his improvements to the parties 
concerned for a moiety of the savings above the use of Newcomen's 
steam engine, brought a " remedy " to all the coal mines of Great 
Britain ; concurring with an experimental Arkwright and Whitney, 
"reformed" all the cotton fields of the South, all the spinning 
wheels and looms of Europe and America ; and with an experi- 
mental Fulton on a single river of a single State in the New 
World, " emancipated " navigation from the chains of wind and tide, 
almost in every sea, and lake, and river of the globe. 

This last illustration introduces us to the peculiar advantages of 
our own system, depending as it did, for its first impulse and scope, 
upon the questionable patronage of a single State. The State of 
New York, in the use of a power finally decided not to be hers, 
gave steam navigation to the United States and to mankind. If the 
final interpretation of the Constitution by the Courts of the Union 
had been given at the first moment of experiment and uncertainty, 
it would have hindered instead of advancing ; it might have 
destroyed instead of sustaining, the great undertaking which, besides 
opening the wide world of waters to regular and rapid communica- 
tion among men, has also shortened by three fourths, the great 
thoroughfares by land, through our own States, and almost through- 
out the world. 



71 

The same State of New York, in the use of her unquestionable 
powers, has given another ilhistrious example. AVithout authority 
over any other State, witliout power — simply by acting for herself, 
and proving for herself, and thus showing what was good for others, 
she has led the whole sisterhood in her train. Not by authority 
over the Union, but without authority ; not by centralization of the 
States, but by subdivision into separate sovereignties, has been pro- 
duced a system of internal improvements extending over all the 
States ; and this work of many as one, is due to the enterprise and 
success of the single State of New York, in undertidiing and carry- 
ing through, the P^rie Canal; becoming thus, in the best sense, the 
Empire State, ruling by not ruling, becoming by example and influ- 
ence alone, the welcomed Sovereign of the whole. A single State, 
in the use of its "own inherited and acknowledged powers, experi- 
menting upon its own facilities and resources, with great misgivings, 
devised, attempted, modified, perfected, the first great work of Inter- 
nal improvement ; and behold other States have followed her exam- 
ple, until all are bound together by Canals and Railroads, doing the 
work of each separate State for its own behoof, and yet binding all 
into an indissoluble one ; all becoming more firmly united by being 
so distinctly divided ; a more perfect one because they were many. 

This capacity in a State, not to rule many States, a w'hole section, 
or the whole Union, but to influence by a worthy example, has illus- 
tration in our earlier annals ; in the rise and progi-ess of the sepa- 
rate States and of the Union, which at length became established 
and completed. The whole course of events shows the advantage 
to the whole of separate Sovereignty in the parts. For its own all- 
important purposes, we honor and value the United Sovereignty 
wliich God has given us ; but in so far as we desire either a sectional 
or general result in regard to purposes belonging to the separate 
States, we accept rather the opportunity and the scope for injiuence 
which has prevailed so often, and wrought out the needful advan- 
tage. By the influence of State upon State, we have become 
what we are. From the beginning it has been each separate 
State, experimenting unconsciously for otlier States, which has led 
forward our deliverances and our blessings. In the wars with the 
savage tribes, and their European abettors and leaders, and with the 
mother country, and in the rise and progress of our separate and 
united powers, up to the Constitution itself; advantages have grown 



by means of our separate Sovereignties ; State example and influ- 
ence, prompting, directing, and uniting different Sections, and the 
whole. A few examples will suffice. 

It was, then, by this influence of State upon State, that the Rev- 
olution of 1688 was carried through the American Colonies. In 
the acknowledgment of William and Mary, and the establishment 
of the " Bill of Rights," says the historian Bancroft, " a popular 
insurrection beginning at Boston, extended to the Chesapeake and the 
wilderness." The idea of an American Congress succeeded natu- 
rally thereupon. " Invitations were given by letter from the Gen- 
eral Court of Massachusetts, and extended to all the Colonies, as 
far at least as Maryland. Massachusetts, the parent of so many 
States, is certainly the parent of the American Union," born in truth 
of the influence of State upon State, on the first day of May, 1690, 
when " Congress " met at New York. That great change in the 
future of all the States — in their prospective unity as an English 
people, with the first principles of the British Constitution, strength- 
ening State Governments, and uniting them for the common good 
— the capture of Louisburg by Gov. Shirley in the year 1745, was 
due to the action of Massachusetts — to the influence of Massachu- 
setts upon the sisterhood of Colonies. " The Legislature of Massa- 
chusetts, after some hesitation, resolved on the expedition by a ma- 
jority of a single vote. New York and Pennsylvania sent a small 
supply of artillery and provisions. New England alone furnished 
men." 

The grand coalition (for so it may be called,) which delivered the 
British Colonies forever from " the French and Indians," — which 
developed them into (almost) independent States, while it combined 
them (almost) into a Sovereign Unity, was due to the action of Vir- 
ginia in sending Major Washington " to insist on the evacuation of 
the French Posts on the Ohio," and in their raising troops to assert 
their rights ; inspiring thus all the Colonies with a sense of their 
separate powers, and of the necessity and advantage of Union, and 
giving rise to the quasi Union at Albany in 1754. The influence 
of Virginia through a long course of exertions and deliverances, 
brought the French war to a prosperous conclusion, and estabbshed 
the British race and influence in North America ; to grow how soon, 
and how flourishing, into the United States ! The resolutions of 
Patrick Henry in the Legislature of Virginia — the circular letter 



73 

of Massachusetts proposing to call a central Congress, produced tlie 
meeting of nine Colonies at New York, with the concurrence of the 
rest, on the 2d Tuesday of October, 17G5. The proposition of Mas- 
sachusetts during the exile of its Legislature to Salem, for a Conti- 
nental Congress, by its influence, produced the General Congress 
of Se[)tcmber, 1774, and the Declaration of Rights, claiming all 
the privileges of British subjects for the American States ; and, in 
truth, the Declaration of Independence itself, July 4, 1776, and its 
effective and triumphant accomplishment. And finally, the propo- 
sition of Virginia for the Convention of 1787, influenced all the 
States to join in forming the Constitution, which, in essence, the 
course of events had wrought out — in completing and crowning the 
work which had grown so long by the interaction of the States upon 
one another, in the perfect unity of separated Sovereignties, indis- 
solubly one, and yet capable of indefinite increase. 

This history of the influence of State upon State must not be dis- 
missed without referring also to the individual influence which is at 
the same time exemplified for the encouragement of the philanthro- 
pist and patriarch. Each State movement was but the movement, 
extended and multiplied, of patriotic individuals, acting with the 
Providence, and aided by the Providence, which has been with 
these States for good. Especially may the crowning work, the 
adoption of the Constitution, and its favorable operation, be ascribed 
not to the central authority or power of either the Congress or Con- 
vention of 1787; but in how great a degree to the influence of 
Washington, and other leading patriots, in forming the Constitution ; 
and then to the illustrious three who united in defending and com- 
mending the instrument, in forming which two of them had part. 
The essays of Publius! who can tell their influence in securing the 
adoption of the Constitution, and its favorable operation for more 
than three score years ? The numbers of the Federalist, the joint 
work of Jay, Hamilton, and jMadison ; Avithout authority, without 
power — ruled without ruling — still rule, and will not cease to rule 
the American States. 

It is not authority, then, nor power of the whole over the parts, 
nor overruling force, nor the Aveight of Section against Section, to 
which we are taught to look, for whatever, through this wide domain 
it is desirable to accomplish, but to influence, which any State may 
exert upon many States ; nay, any individual, if indeed he may find 
7 



74 

and bring fortli wisdom for the people. The whole voice of Amer- 
ican history demands that each separate State, or any portion of the 
States, shall be strong over the rest by influence alone. Northern 
philanthropy will do its utmost — not by authority where no author- 
ity exists — not by power where there is no power — not by an im- 
perative balance where there is an essential equipoise ; but without 
authority and power, and notwithstanding impotence, whenever it 
shall unite an available wisdom to fraternal good-will. 

It is thus with moral as with physical forces. We take account of 
vis inerticB as well a3 vis : of impotence as well as power, whether 
that power may not contend idly against its bounds, or that it may be 
accumulated and applied — of the mountain sides, up which the river 
cannot run, as well as of its natural flow — of the banks which protect 
the valley, as well as of the stream which waters it and bears its 
products on its bosom — of the rocky barriers which hold back 
internal oceans, and preserve half a continent from the flood of 
waters, as well as of the tremendous torrent. Nay, instead of con- 
tending with a vis inertice which we cannot annul, we make a 
new power out of impotence itself. The attempt to send the 
current up the mountain side would be in vain ; the rocky barrier 
removed, there would be only desolation and ruin ; but the dyke 
rightly interposed, and behold the river fertihzes the country, or 
does the labor of thousands of men. What if there be impotence 
in the United States, which forbids their action ? Out of that very 
impotence may come the most effectual strength. Who shall tell us 
that when the impotence is acknowledged, it will not itself prove 
the very reservoir of power ? that when we shall have left off the 
vain attempt to make the waters run up the hill, we may not find a 
method of raising and directing the fertilizing and working floods ? 
Out of the United States " cannot," against which we have wrought 
and struggled in vain, what a " can " might grow, working wonders 
of blessing for the North and the South. 



75 



CHATTER XII. 

THE COMMON TERRITOIIIES AND FREE SOIL. 

What are the rights and duties of the United States, as to the 
common territories ? Ought they to claim them ? — Can they se- 
cure them by a sectional vote as free soil, as excluding slavery 
forever? In answering these questions, we assert, Jirsf, the right of 
the South to carry their property and labor, in the forms existing in 
the progress and establishment of our political Union, into their 
fair j)roportion of whatever territory is, or may be, the common prop- 
erty of all. 

Of course we mean their political right ; their right relatively to 
the United States ; their right of doing, as opposed to our right of 
hindering, independently of the moral question, in regard to which 
they are responsible to God and not to the United States. Political- 
ly, relatively, so far as our right of control is concerned, the slave 
states have the right, not only to retain slavery if they will, but to 
carry it, as it was at the time of the completed union, into their 
equitable proportion of any territory we may hold in common ; and 
those States must be held accountable if they take advantage of a 
political right to perpetuate a moral wrong. But whatever wrong 
they may choose to commit within the old and settled prescrip- 
tion, we (the United States) have no political right to forbid or 
prevent. 

The right thus stated, is [)lain on the general principles of part- 
nership. The rights of partnership extend to all property held or 
acquired in common, and do not leave the question of individual 
application and use to be judged and settled according to the con- 
science or will of the stronger party. If in a mercantile partner- 
ship of three, one of the parties were found disposed to invest his 
share of the proGts in the slave trade itself, the other two would 
have no right to withhold his dividend. Their only course would be 



76 



to pay over to tlaeir erring brother his own, and then, as individu- 
als, to do what might belong to them as individuals, in dissuading 
him from the error. In our political partnership we have an 
instance in point. The surplus revenue was property in common, 
and as such, belonged equally to all the States. Did any one 
ever dream that the surplus revenue was liable to be withheld from 
the South, except on the condition that none of it should be employed 
in the purchase of slaves? or even in that crying abomination, 
the purchase of families torn asunder ? "What if the distribution of 
the surplus revenue to the South might enable the purchase of 
thousands of slaves in the worst form of the traffic, had the United 
States any right to withhold the southei-n dividend? 

What is plain in a mercantile partnership, what is plain in the 
partnership of the States as to funds in common, is not less plain as 
to territory in common. In the absence of any specific provision, 
the principle would hold, that being possessed or acquired in com- 
mon, it would be to be used in common, according to the custom of 
the partners at the time of the compact, and continued until now. 
If it be said that the acquisition of territorial property was not con- 
templated in the rise and settlement of the Union, — in the articles 
of partnership, — it may be replied with equal truth, neither was a 
surplus revenue contemplated ; but want of foresight did not change 
the principles on which the common funds were to be distributed — 
did not give the right of control or appropriation to the free States 
— does not give the right of control or appropriation of territory 
any more than of funds. In either case, also, how plain it is that 
if the emergency had been foreseen it would have been especially 
provided for. The presumption that a guaranty of rights in partner- 
ship would have been required if the claims had been foreseen, sets 
aside those claims from all place in the idea of the original contract. 

Besides this plain application of general principles, there is not 
wanting the allowance of the right in question by the Constitution 
itself; as it seems to us expressed, but most certainly implied. The 
requirement of the Constitution, " that nothing in it shall be so con- 
strued as to prejudice any claims of the United States or any par- 
ticular State," must, from its very terms, be applicable to territorial 
as well as other possessions ; to surplus lands as well as surplus 
revenues. How much stronger, then, is the allowance of State 
claims according to the settled usages of the States when the Con- 



77 

stitution was formed, Iry the immediate connection of the caution- 
ary clause with the very article wliicli asserts the " power of Con- 
gress to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations re- 
specting the territory or other property belonging to the United 
States." The northern States are not to be prejudiced, individually 
or collectively, in the right to their " West," for their capital and 
labor, for their customs and institutions, i. e., ivithout slavery ; and if 
the southern States were the stronger in votes and power, they would 
have no right by the Constitution to introduce slavery into the 
northern territories. In like manner, the southern States are not to 
be prejudiced in the right to their capital and labor, for their cus- 
toms and institutions, existing when the Constitution was formed, 
i. 0., icifh slavery. So far as political rights are concerned ; so far 
as regards the relations of each separate State to the United States, 
as a central sovereignty under the Constitution, the way must be 
considered equally open for the removal westward of capital and 
labor ; for the North without, for the South with, slavery. 

And this right is not asserted merely in behalf of the masters ; it 
is claimed also for the slaves. We have something to propose for 
them belter, as we think, than slavery as it is ; but whatever is pro- 
posed, whether amelioration or emancipation, we insist that the way 
shall be open for them to live by their labor ; and that the territo- 
rial scope on which both northern and southern labor have thriven 
hitherto shall not be denied to the slaves and the African race. 
They have the right to claim that their way of support shall not 
be shut against them — that they shall not be denied the best oppor- 
tunities of profitable toil. If, as is alleged, slave labor has become 
unprofitable in any of the States, then have the slaves themselves 
an interest in other fields where labor may be profitable — where 
they may live by their labor. 

2. But besides the right of the South, we assert further, the im- 
potcjice of the United States to enforce any sectional prohibition of 
the North against the South. If we will not allow the political 
right of the South to their equitable share of the common territory, 
and to its unrestricted use, we have then to find that we cannot set 
it aside. Wliatever the United States may undertake by northern 
preponderance against the political rights of the South, must fail, 
for the want of a sufficient northern preponderance — must fail from 
the equilibrium of forces. As impotent as we should be to regulate 
7* 



78 

or abolish slavery In the States, so impotent are we to prevent its 
removal to the southern " West." If we had the right as partners 

— if we had the constitutional authority, we have not the decisive 
power. The great Overruler has so overruled that we cannot rule 

— has so evenly balanced us that we cannot turn the scale. 

No doubt this assertion, this indispensable admission, may be 
unpalatable, if indeed we wish to overrule; no doubt it may be 
questioned, because it is unpalatable. But is not the admission 
indispensable ? It may seem easy, at first thought, to make out a 
case in favor of the North, strong in its homogeneous and active 
population, its majorities attained in the house of representatives, 
and at length in the senate also, and we may over-hastily say we 
can: — the northern section has such preponderance that it can 
enforce a sectional law excluding the South from territories other- 
wise open ; i. e. with slavery as existing at the formation of the 
Constitution. 

Let it be supposed, then, that there are territories otherwise open 
to slavery, and that we carry our northern will against the will of the 
South ; that the grand question absorbing all other questions, is at 
length decided according to the will of the North, and that FREE 
SOIL is decreed for all present and future territory. Will any 
man think that the question would thereby be decided ? — that that 
decree could stand? Would the question be settled forever by that 
minute majority which alone it is possible to suppose ? — by that 
minute preponderance which turned the scale ? What if there be a 
majority in the house ? — what if there has come to be a majority 
in the senate also, and the equilibrium hitherto preserved be 
technically destroyed ? — does that prevent the substantial equili- 
brium which the great Overruler has put beyond and above the 
decrees of man ? Does that prevent the equipoise still secured by 
compounded if not simple " ratios ? " Does that destroy the weight 
which the South possesses in its numbers and advantages united ? 
In that substantial equilibrium which Providence has settled, can 
there be found a settled and decisive preponderance ? Will not, 
must not such a vote as we have supposed be speedily reversed, or 
become a dead letter by being unenforced ? — still showing in the 
future that equilibrium cannot overbalance. 

But suppose the attempt to enforce as earnest, as determined, as 
rigid as to enact the sectional law ; while yet the South would not 



79 

obey the law without enforcement. How long would the North 
persist against the South ? How long carry on the almost equal 
struggle, before it would learn the lesson of equal forces on which 
we now insist ? Or, if the North should persist, determinedly, vio- 
lently, at the point of the sword, to carry a measure which God has 
given them no right or power to carry, how long before the South, 
almost if not quite equal to the North, would be reduced to that 
quiet submission which would settle the question ? — how long before 
they would become dependants instead of partners, — subject States 
instead of coequal sovereignties, — before sectional preponderance 
would take the place of sectional equilibrium ? Rather, how long 
would it be before the wisdom demanded by the actual equilibrium 
(not compromise, but confoi-mity to an overruling Providence) 
would rise, and close the useless, baneful strife ? 

Assuredly, no decree of the United States can be permanent, 
which is absolutely sectional, — which is made by a casual prepon- 
derance, where, in the main, the balances are even. The abolition 
of the slave trade in 1808, was not carried against the South and 
over the South, but with and for the South, and therefore it has 
been permanent and abiding. 

This impossibility of decisive action of Section against Section, 
is no doubt as applicable to any attempts of the South against the 
North, as of the North against the South. K the North has to 
learn that it cannot work its sectional will against the unalterable 
principles of equipoise, so also has the South. The rendition of 
fugitive slaves was settled by the Constitution, thus far by the con- 
sent of the North, that those " held to labor " should not be " dis- 
charged," but " delivered up on the claim of the party to whom 
labor might be due," and no doubt this settlement may remain 
fixed, so long as the South shall insist only on the delivery, on 
proof, before and by the proper authorities. But suppose the South 
to require more, — action without proof — " delivery " before deci- 
sion that " service and labor were due," and the cooperation of citi- 
zens, under severe penalties, against the general will and feeling of 
the North ; can such a sectional law be enforced ? Can it be other 
than a dead letter, or the occasion of baneful, endless contention for 
the want of any sufficient southern preponderance ? 

"What, then, it may be asked, is to be the issue, as it r-egards 
southern institutions and all the interests of property coTinected 



80 

therewith ? Is mere equipoise to be as fatal as northern prepon- 
derance ? Is southern " property " to become worthless by southern 
impotence, in the even-balanced scale ? By no means : impo- 
tence acknowledged, new powers may arise out of that very impo- 
tence itself. There is a better " cordon " by which slave property 
may be at once retained and enhanced, than any Fugitive Slave 
law, — needing no posse comitatus, no fines, imprisonments, or blood. 
There is a method, dimly seen in the confusion of the times, in 
which the North and the South may earnestly concur — a Reme- 
dial Code, — an ameliorated slavery, under which those "held to 
labor " shall not wish to escape, and the northern philanthropist 
shall have no wish to tempt or aid ; making the " cordon " of 
comfortable livelihood, unbroken families, and happy homes. The 
time may come when the " being held to service " shall be considered 
well compensated by the rations and privileges which are its proper 
counterpart ; when free blacks themselves will desire the position 
of slaves rather than freemen. So long as their condition must be 
servile and dependent, the well-endowed slave will not think him- 
self below but above the ill-provided freeman. 

3. An absolute free soil is not the desideratum for southwestern 
territory ; i. e., for Africans in the actual southern proportions to 
the European race. Without political right, without decisive and 
overruling power, we could not establish an absolute free soil if we 
would. What we now assert is, we would not if we could. 

This assertion is not made against but for the African race ; not 
to prevent, but to secure their well-being. We have not claimed 
free soil for the slave States themselves, and we cannot, therefore, 
for any territories whose ratio of races is to be the same. No 
doubt the claim of the African race to the " pursuit of happiness " 
is equal to that of the European ; but in so far as that claim is on 
us, it is that we should help and not hinder that pursuit. In so far 
as depends on us, they are not to be endowed with " too free a free- 
dom," lest they be thereby " less free," and some of their present 
bonds are to be retained, if they may thereby be " more free." 

Free Soil, indeed ! The two races belting the continent from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, all States and all territories in their 
present actual Southern proportions ; the European, with all the 
advantages of skill and capital, and crowding labor, too ; the Afri- 
can advanced, indeed, but how little, comparatively, beyond the 



81 

barbarism of bis fathers and his cotemporarics in Africa ; without 
skill, and enterprise, and energy, and capital, and amidst the crowd- 
ing laborers of Europe — will any law of free soil make free soil to 
the African race ? Will it assure the protection and direction of 
capital in aid of African labor, or of African labor in aid of capi- 
tal ? May it not binder and obstruct, in place of helping the pur- 
suit of happiness ? If by free soil be intended an American or 
even a British freedom ; the whole history and condition of the Afri- 
can race, their aboriginal barbarism, and their present state and 
relations, may be supposed to cry out against it. Bonds are need- 
ful to make free. Let all good bonds be retained, whetlu'r on the 
slave or the master; let bad bonds only be loosed. No nialtcr for 
the name. Free soil, in name, cannot make the thing, the substance, 
the reality. Slavery, with its bad bonds loosed, its good bonds 
retained, cannot prevent the well-being of the race. No matter for 
the name. Let it be slavery ameliorated, or freedom restricted up 
to the truest well-being of eapital and labor, of European and Afri- 
can, and then the two races may flow together in their southern 
proportions, over the southern " West," with e(iual o})portunity for 
the " pursuit of happiness." 

This claim for an ameliorated slavery, or a restricted freedom in 
the Territories, proceeds on the supposition that the demand for free 
soil is indeed in behalf of the African race, and not against them ; 
that it is not the ban of exclusion from the climates and employ- 
ments to which their long settlement in the New World has given 
them a title. But is it so ? or do the advocates of free soil intend 
the boon for the European alone, to the exclusion of the African? 
Is it in truth intended to admit the negro in southern proportions, 
with the full franchises of the North? And does this united cry 
prove its sincerity, by the readiness of the States from wliich it 
comes to make their own soil free ? Or is there a common and 
universal consent, that in the States, free soil in southern ratios 
cannot, must not be admitted ? What answer is made by the free 
States themselves, amidst their loudest cries, their most determined 
action for free soil ? Are they ready to receive a free African pop- 
ulation, in the proportion of one third or one half, to an equal share 
of social, civil, and political rights ? Is New York ? Is Pennsylva- 
nia ? Is Ohio? Indiana? Illinois? Michigan? Are they ready 
to share their several States with the African race in soutlicrn 



proportions ? If the question were now before their own legisla- 
tures, of making these States free soil, would they open their doors 
gladly for one third or one half of their present population to go 
out, and for an equal number of the African race to come in as fel- 
low citizens and voters, as " the sovereign people " equally with 
themselves ? On the other hand who does not know, that if there 
were such a population ready to rush in, laws would be instantly 
made to check the immigration, and to limit the freedom of the 
immigrants ? Massachusetts herself, with her full African fran- 
chise, her free soil for her eight thousand of African blood, — would 
she be " free soil " if the prospect were that in ten years one third or 
one half of her population would be free negroes, having, hke the 
one hundredth now, their equal share in giving direction to her 
whole condition ; to her industry, and education, and morals, and 
religion ? Would Massachusetts be free soil with this prospect 
before her ? "Would her legislature be agreed in continuing and 
establishing free soil. And if the question before Congress could 
involve the destinies of Massachusetts, and were about to introduce 
into her bosom the southern proportion of the African race, making 
one third, or one half, instead of one hundredth, would her course 
in Congress still be as hitherto ? "Would her delegation vote for 
an absolute free soil ? "Would her legislature so instruct and advise 
her representatives and senators ? 

In truth, whatever lapse of sound judgment there may be in the 
heat of controversy, and in regard to others and the distant, it may 
be asserted as the sense of the country, — of the North as well as 
the South, — that the African race, inheriting barbarism, and but 
partially civilized ; comparatively without capital and skill, and not 
homogeneous with the leading race, would not, in large proportions, 
promote the prosperity of a State, or even of themselves, as coequal 
citizens ; that both for their own good and the good of the whole 
people, they need to be legislated for, rather than to be co-legisla- 
tors. The sense of the North itself is against free soil. The sense 
of Massachusetts is against free soil. We do not complain at the 
reluctance of the North to a large free African population, — to 
that sense of the necessities of the case which has ruled hitherto, 
and would rule with still more vigilance in view of any large in- 
crease. All that we require is, that all restriction shall wisely seek 
the well-being of both classes of the people, and that there shall be 



83 

a corresponding mitigation of the northern claim for southern free 
soil : that it shall be temperate, and regulated by the general sense 
which long experience has produced, and that an ameliorated slavery 
or a restricted freedom shall be allowed, not as the white man's 
privilege of oppression, but as the black man's baun — the true 
method of his well-being. 

Tlie })oints, whether of amelioration or restriction, cannot now be 
indicated. Keeping in view the general idea of " good bonds re- 
tained and bad bonds loosed," the way is open for northern 2>hilan- 
thropists and southern patriarchs to unite in the high work of pro- 
moting the well-being of both classes and of the whole people. 
Instead of excluding the Africans of the South from the southern 
" "West," hemming them within their present boundaries, for fear 
of them as free citizens on the one hand, or dread of slavery as 
it is on the other ; let patriarchs and philanthropists inquire 
whether there are not principles of justice and mercy, in which 
the North and the South can agree ; whether a Territorial Com- 
mission, composed of the sages and patriots of both sections, might 
not unite with reference to any southern territory, in measures of 
advantage to both races and to the whole country ; might not speed 
the natural flow of both races into the great southern " West," with 
only this condition, that it " shall carry no elements of misery 
which a wise benevolence can cast off," and all elements of well- 
being which a wise benevolence can carry. 

"Whatever might be the specific work of such a Commission, the 
United States would have the same opportunity of influence which 
we have suggested with reference to an experiment by any State, 
with some advantages. The vain strife of equal sections laid aside, 
and the sages and patriots of both sections united in the simple 
attempt to aid the " pursuit of happiness " by both races, accord- 
ing to their several conditions and character, a general welcome 
would be prepared for any well-tried and well-proved method, and 
that method might be aided and hastened by the liberality of the 
"United States. If the ameliorations proposed should be thought to 
the disadvantage of the slaveholders, the United States are compe- 
tent to give donations in land to those who may adopt their propo- 
sals in regard to an experimental territory. "Who shall tell us 
that when the North and the South shall unite in wliat they can 
do, that they will not then be able to do much ; that out of impos- 



84 

sibility of action section against section, there may not proceed 
action by agreement for the highest well-being of the African race, 
in and with the highest well-being of the whole people ? An experi- 
mental territory, encouraged by a " land bounty," might be found 
the most prosperous of territories, if its only bonds upon master 
and servant were those which make " more free ; " might first 
relieve the South of any surplus African population, and then, re- 
acting on the sources from which it proceeded, might produce and 
secure the well-being of the sovereign States themselves, in the 
manner best suited to the condition and character of both classes 
of their people. 

I cannot close this chapter better than by referring to the oft- 
repeated jihrase, prominent in the discussion of the territorial ques- 
tion, and assumed as deciding in favor of Free Soil, in the popular 
sense of that term — " There is a higher law than the Constitution 
regulating our authority over the public domain." Undoubtedly 
there is. Nothing could be more false and fatal than the denial 
of the " higher law," if thereby be meant, that the laws of Heaven 
may be transgressed in obedience to the laws of earth ; that nations 
may rightfully do wrong, under their own special provisions for 
wrong-doing. True ! a thousand times true. There is a higher 
law than the Constitution. All honor to the senator who uttered 
and urged a principle so high and holy in the Senate of the United 
States. May it never be forgotten or disobeyed ! 

But with reference to the legislation to which it was applied by the 
distinguished senator, what if the higlier law forbid, instead of com- 
manding it ? What if the great Overruler has given no political right 
to the United States, to legislate in the matter at all ; and has, besides, 
so evenly balanced them, section against section, that they could not 
use the right if it had been given ? What if the higher law so ruled 
in the birth, growth, and union of these States, as to give certain 
rights to the separate States, and to withhold them from the United 
States ; and so ordered sectional arrangements as to produce a sub- 
stantial equilibrium between the North and the South, proved in every 
attempt to disturb the balance for more than sixty years ? Surely 
the higher law hitherto has restrained authority, forbidden power 
" over the domain ; " has set limits which could not be passed, 
leaving free scope only to whatever wisdom and good will. 

In like manner there is, undoubtedly, a higher law than the laxo 



85 

of nations. And yet that "higher law," instead of making every 
nation's duties the duties of every other nation, or the duties of the 
jiarts the common duties of the whole, is found to restrict authority 
and power to each one's appropriate domain, as the great Overruler 
has distributed them. Thus, the United States, France, Russia, 
have nothing to forbid and nothing to allow in regard to miserable 
Ireland ; nothing to do in its behalf, save only what no " law of 
nations," no " balance of power " can forbid or hinder, — the work 
of heavenly charity. 

And this work of heavenly charity, — free to every nation on the 
face of the earth, — is not restrained from any part of our beloved 
country, by any barriers which Heaven has ordained. There is free 
scope, notwithstanding; nay, there is free scope, thereby, for the 
utmost wisdom and good will. True, there is a law higher than 
the Constitution, ruling the Constitution itself, withholding as well 
as giving political rights, withholding as well as giving political 
power, forbidding sectional overruling as surely as beach and rock 
forbid the ocean to overrule the land, and as surely with kind 
and merciful intent. Do not tell us that a " higher law " requires 
the sea to go farther than to its appointed bars and doors, its 
" proud waves," not to be stayed, so that it may flood the world 
with good. Rather let the sea obey the law which restrains it, and 
remain shut up in its " decreed place," for then only shall it be the 
never-failing source of dew, and rain, and fountain, and river, and 
lake, for a blessing to all people and all times. 



86 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SUGGESTIOXS FOR A KEMEDIAL CODE. 

Keeping in view the princijiles illustrated in the precetling 
chapters, the leading points of a remedial code are suggested 
in the following sections, in their bearing upon the well-being of 
both masters and slaves. This is done, not in the view of preparing 
them for freedom, — of any " apprenticeship," whether shorter or 
longer, — but on the supposition of a continued and abiding relation, 
in the full assurance that the evils and woes of slavery are not of 
its essence, and that its advantages and blessings may therefore be 
retained and cherished by a Christian State. 

The suggestions for a remedial Gode are made with great diffi- 
dence. The writer is deeply sensible how difficult it must prove to 
match the peculiarities of condition and relation, of race, habit, and 
position ; and especially how imperfect his own suggestions are 
likely to be without the intimate and special knowledge which he 
does not possess. And yet he makes them earnestly and hopefully, 
believing that the most imperfect attempt in the right line is better 
than mere " pro-slavery," or mere " anti-slavery," and even that 
diffident suggestions may prove better than any confident and prema- 
ture completeness. 

The great principles of a Remedial Code are sufficiently i)lain. 
They dawn in the words of Mr. Pitt, anticipating the abolition of 
the slave trade : " They " (the slaves) " might be relieved from 
every thing harsh and severe, and put under the protection of the 
law ; " and of Mr. Wilberforce, " Under the protection of the law is 
in fact to be a freeman." Indeed they appear again and again, and 
still more and more clearly, in propositions and recommendations 
from the slaveholding States themselves, giving assurance that 
kindly suggestions from whatever quarter will not be in vain, how- 
ever imperfect they may be. Here, as every where, we must be- 



87 

gin in order to learn, — experience must correct unavoidable errors, 
and unfold and I'ipen the methods whicli shall grow into practicable 
rules. The first thing is to take the right direction, to aim at the 
right end. This done, every step will be progressive and advanta- 
geous. 

Section I. 

Mutual Bonds of Labor and Capital. 

The present relations of master and slave, as it respects labor 
and maintenance, require to be retained. Fixed providentially 
together by whatever fault of their predecessors, they are actually 
in a state of mutual dependence, — the masters for labor, and the 
slaves for provision ; and bonds upon both parties are required for 
the well-being of both ; — not less of the slave than the master, not 
less of the master than the slave ; not less of those depending on 
labor paid for by capital, than of the capitalists themselves. Tliose 
are good bonds which require the master to provide for those 
dependent on him fbr their daily maintenance, and for their support 
in infancy, sickness, and old ago, — which enslave him to his slaves ; 
and those are good bonds, also, which require for the master the 
labor which alone can enable him to make this constant and per- 
manent provision — which enslave them to their master. In the 
existing condition of the parties, there must needs be " rations " 
and securities for the laborers and their natural dependents, — 
and labor, also, in order to rations and securities. The masters 
must be masters still; must furnish employment, must require 
labor, that they may provide for want. The slaves must be slaves 
still, in so far as to render that labor by which alone want can be 
supplied. " The being held to labor," and the necessary correla- 
tive, the being held to maintain labor, are the essential elements of 
slavery, and whatever evils and disabilities are not indispensable to 
this, are not of its essence ; are excrescences which humanity and 
Christianity are required to remove with all possible care and 
diligence. 

The bonds to labor and to maintain labor, thus allowed and 
required, were, as we have asserted, inconsiderately removed in 
Europe, and the " masses " have suffered for centuries, from an 
inconsiderate and unprovided freedom to the serfs. They are even 



more needful to be retained here with a race not homogeneous, and 
inheriting more barbarism, indolence, and improvidence.* 

In retaining the bonds to labor and provision, there must needs 
be a benevolent wisdom. The relations of labor and provision must 
be carefully defined, and the best interests of master and slave 
equally secured. "Whatever has been found to be the amount of 
labor needful to enable the master to maintain the slave, and the 
" rations " and privileges to correspond, must be defined. The 
masters are entitled to the use of their capital, and to some due 
return for their supervision and direction, as truly as the capitalists 
of the North, both for themselves and that they may be able to 
furnish to the slaves an available labor. The slaves are entitled to 
such avails as labor can permanently secure. " The laborer is 
worthy of his hire," and must and should be sustained by his 
labor. 

As to the amount to be furnished by the employer, there has 
been found in the freest States no absolute rule, and wages are 
necessarily left to take their natural course : falling when they 
rise so high that capital is compelled to withdraw employment, 
and rising when prosperous capital seeks to increase the number 
of its laborers. Under the system of slavery, the rightful " hire " 
must be for substance on the same principle, viz., what capital can 
vay. The amount of " rations " and privileges must be such that 
the masters can furnish them, instead of being compelled to cut 
them off altogether or in part ; and such, also, as to give fair 
encouragement of their being used to good and useful purposes. 

"Whatever other legislation may be needed in regard to capital 
and labor, this at least is required, viz.. That the substitution of free 
for slave labor shall be discountenanced and even disallowed. The 
free inhabitants of the slave States are not, of course, to be hindered 
from labor. But there must be no general admission of immigrant 
labor, and if it threaten large increase, it must be forbidden. Slave 
labor must be protected. Those who assert that slavery is to be 
abolished by substituting free laborers from Europe and Asia, know 
not what they say. Granted that free labor would be more profita- 
ble than slave labor, and that the substitution of it would result in 
the voluntary emancipation of the slaves, then must the State inter- 

* See Chapter VI. 



89 

pcse, and forbid a change which would take the bread from the 
mouth of one third or one half of its people ; which would give but 
the franchise of want and misery. The masters must not have 
power to substitute emigrant labor, to the loss and damage of the 
slaves, whatever direct advantage may tempt to the injustice.* Alas 
for " Africa in America," if they do ! 

On the other hand, labor must be secured to the masters from 
the slaves. The masters must have the right to require labor in 
return for the rations and securities which can be jirovided by labor 
alone. The " hire " has its claim upon the laborer. If the mas- 
ter's powers have not been properly defined and checked hitherto, 
or if custom has permitted abuses of those powers, let whatever 
needful provisions be made for the future ; but let not their right- 
ful claim be denied or made vain ; let not the system which " holds 
to labor " be hindered or broken up. Let it remain, as the best 
means of providing for want, and the best preventive against idle- 
ness, improvidence, and vagrancy. 

liut bonds cannot be retained unless they may be enforced. It 
belongs, therefore, to a Remedial Code to retain and improve meth- 
ods of enforcement, whether of "rations" and privileges on the part 
of the masters, or of labor on the part of the slaves. 

First, as to the masters. So far as custom long settled and cir- 
cumstances secure their due care of their slaves, it is weU. But 
so far as needful, that care must be secured by new legislation, and 



* Says Mr. SawtcUc, writing fromXew Orleans, April, 1847, (sec New York 
Observer, July 21,') «' The thousands and tens of thousands of the Irish and 
(fcrmans that have poured in here from the Old World, .ind which arc seen 
every -where rolling cotton bales or hogsheads of sugar, driving hacks and 
drays, and firing their engines, and actually supplanting the blacks in many 
departments of labor, are settlmg the question beyond all controversy, that sla- 
very is not only an unnecessary evil but a pecuniary curse." ♦' I can make 
more money off my plantation," says one of the largest sugar planters in 
liouisiana, '• by cutting it into small farms, erecting little cottages, and rent- 
ing them to these families of emigrants, they bringing to my sugar house 
so much cane annually for rent, thus relieving me from all the vexations, 
responsibilities, and expenses of providing for a hundred and fifty slaves that 
must be fed, clothed, and taken care of when sick, whether the crops fail or 
not ; and the time is not far off when the experiment will bo made to the 
entire satisfaction of every southern man ; thereby rendering slaves a pecu- 
niary burden too grievous to be borne, and Avhich must be throMTi off." 

8* 



90 

must be enforced by the executive powers of the State ; and so 
much the more decidedly as the slaves are less able to secure their 
own rights. Some officer from among the slaves may be the 
channel of complaint, and some court of redress may issue the 
complaint without cost to the slave ; save where his proceeding 
shall have been merely vexatious and causeless. The masters, if 
needful, may be compelled to furnish suitable rations and privileges. 

As to the slaves, also, there must needs be means and methods of 
enforcement. In every country, in the freest States, it is right 
that labor should be enforced. The State, responsible to provide 
for pauperism, may take measures to prevent it ; may insist on some 
honest method of supplying the wants of the people ; may correct 
as well as prevent, may prevent as well as correct, idleness, vagran- 
cy and improvidence. If slavery be retained under some amelio- 
rating code, then not only may the masters be compelled to provide 
rations and securities, but the slaves may be compelled to suitable 
labor — the labor needful to enable those rations and securities. 

Before suggesting the proper methods of enforcing labor, let it 
first be required that every pains should be taken to prevent the 
necessity of enforcement — to secure voluntary labor. This will be 
partially done by retaining slavery, i. e., by keeping up the habits and 
expectations of those who, from generation to generation, have been 
" held to labor." Let no formal emancipation hazard those habits 
and expectations ; for, whatever nominal or real freedom might 
result from it, there can be no release to the mass of men from the 
labor by which they must live, — from the " sweat of the brow," in 
which they must " eat their bread," — while yet the old habits and 
expectations might be broken up without any sufficient substitutes. 
Let, then, slavery be so ftir retained as to preserve the old habits 
and expectations of labor, and the old sentiment of obedience in it, 
that there may be no lack of the old rations and privileges furnished 
thereby. It is, I believe, an undisputed fact, that the British West 
Indies were, in this respect, made too free, — were released unhap- 
pily from the habits and expectations of labor — from the sentiment 
of obedient^labor ; emancipated, so far as this matter is concerned, 
to their own disadvantage. If to the old habits and expectations 
there be added such ameliorations as sensibly promote the well- 
being of the slaves, there will be every reason to hope for voluntary 
labor ; for which, also, there are these natural provisions , — 



91 

1. Task work ; giving at once the needful security to the mastei 
for the services due for rations and privileges, and to the slave an 
opportunity to provide for his comfort beyond those rations and 
privileges. 

Where definite daily tasks are not practicable, results may be taken 
instead ; in common parlance, labor may be done by the job ; as a 
field cultivated, a harvest secured, wood cut and hauled, — whether 
by one, or by a company united under one leading and responsible 
head. This method might be carried into any kind of employment, 
and to any extent within the scope of African contractors, receiving 
a good margin for their private advantage, and yet securing to the 
master all that is now expected from slave labor. 

2. Rewards for faithful and skilful service ; for daily labor well 
done ; for a course of tasks well performed ; for contracts diligently 
and advantageously fulfilled.* 

But with all the advantage of tlie habits and expectations of labor 
preserved, and of a method of tasks and rewards, there must still 
be supposed a necessity of enforcement, and of course there must 
be allowed a power of enforcement, all, subject to the checks and 
appeals to be named hereafter. 

1. If there be any system of rewards, the mere withholding them 
may be found an adequate enforcement. 

2. The Scripture rule, " If any man will not work, neither shall 
he eat," suggests an obvious method, viz., the rations of the idle may 
be curtailed. 

3. Property being allowed and encouraged, there may be punish- 
ment by fines, properly guarded ; not accruing to the master's ben- 
efit, save to repair his damage, but to some fund for the advantage 
of the slaves. 

4. Solitary confinement and the whip may be allowed — but re- 
served, especially the whip, for the last resort — under refei'cnce and 
decision of some authority above the overseer or master. As in all 
governments, so it must be understood here, that force is the least 
available, and has its effect not by being fi-cquent and general, but 
by being unfrcquent and special, — by being, in trutli, the last and 
indispensable resort. 

5. There may be added, also, the power of selling against his 

* Compare ClarLsoii's account of Mr. Steel's methods. 



92 

will a slave found incurably idle and negligent, after due delay and 
reference. 

Section II. 
Marriage and the Domestic Relations. 

Those are bad bonds which are stronger than marriage and 
paternity. Without the domestic relations, there is no nonnal con- 
dition of society, no right position of human beings. These rela- 
tions, therefore, must be sustained, in order to well-being. What- 
ever may be the probable issue of this requirement, it must still bo 
made. In this matter, most surely, evil must not be done that good 
may come. 

In order to the security of the domestic relations, marriage must 
begin as a civil and religious contract for life, before official persons 
and witnesses, and with appropriate solemnities ; must be considered 
as sacred and indissoluble as with the white race ; and must be dis- 
solved only on the same conditions and with the same formalities. 
The crimes against marriage, also, fornication and adultery, must 
be under the general laws of the community. 

The family thus estabUshed must be sacred ; must be protected 
in its relations of husband and wife, parents and childi-en ; and must 
not be separated for less causes, or on harder conditions than with 
the white race. 

There will be a direct and blessed advantage to the masters by 
the establishment and pennanence of marriage and the domestic 
relations, because it secures to the slaves the greatest boon of life, 
and delivers them from life's greatest evil, in place of the misery 
now suifered by themselves in the breaking up of families so often 
occurring, and always so liable to occur. 

There must also be an increased advantage from the service of 
the slaves. Whatever promotes contentment and proper enjoy- 
ment ; whatever aids good morals and good conduct, must promote 
and aid their diligence and fidelity, and must make them more and 
more valuable so long as tlieir services are desired ; and regarding 
this matter simply, more valuable if their services are to be sold 
instead of retained. 

Again, there must be some advantage in retaining the arrange- 
ment and autliority of slavery in promoting and establishing mar- 



93 

riage. As in our own state of society, definite and hopeful arrange- 
ments promote marriage, and as marriage, held in honor, prevents 
fornication, adulteiy, and concubinage, so may it be expected to be 
among the slaves ; while the reverse might be feared, if the accus- 
tomed supervision, provision, and hope were broken up. In illus- 
tration, if not confirmation, we have the complaint of a friend and 
advocate of West India emancipation, of the disadvantage of the 
emancipated population in this very respect ; — free, indeed, but too 
free for the promotion of the marriage relation : " IMultitndes of 
families," he writes, "are growing up almost in the wildness of 
nature, without the protection of tlie social condition which is 
ensured by marriage and its holy obligations. Wlien th<.' people 
emerged from slavery, the vices of the system, its indifiV'rence to 
the higher obligations of life, its loose morality, its diminished self- 
respect, and low, sensual condition, still clung to the people." * IMay 
we not suppose that marriage would have been better established, 
and its kindred virtues better secured, and the opposite vices better 
prevented, if the bond to labor and provision and the general over- 
sight and care had been preserved, than by the spontaneous move- 
ments of emancipated slaves, or even of such a free people as the 
African race must be supposed, if their settlement in the "West 
Indies had been free from the first ? 

2. On the other hand, if the domestic relations and morahties are 
sustained, this improvement will react on the value of slaves ; either 
enabling the holder to keep his slave advantageously, or opening 
better ways than now for the disposal of his labor. 

The amelioration here proposed is so indispensable, — in view 
of the whole circumstances and condition of the slaves, — is such a 
demand of nature, as to force itself upon the consideration of tiie 
South. 

" Such a change in our laws," says a writer, years ago, in the 
New Orleans Bulletin, " is called for by motives of humanity, and 
an enlightened view of public and private interests. It would be 
beneficial alike to the master and the slave, to the debtor and the 
creditor, to the State and its citizens. Strong as is the social tie 
between master and slave, it would be tenfold strengthened by the 
adoption of the law proposed." " Shxves in the main would feel 

* National Era, March Sth, 1815 



94 

themselves more permanent, and become happier and better, rising 
in the estimation of their masters." " Shave property would become 
more permanent, and consequently more valuable." 

The following statement has been lately repeated in many papers. 
The last New York Colonization Journal quotes it, with favora- 
ble comments, from the Port Gibson (Mississippi) Eeveille, ag 
follows : — 

" The project now being agitated by the people of North Caro- 
lina, and soon to be carried before the legislature of that State, 
is one which, we think, to say the least of it, will create a sensa- 
tion. It is, 1st. To render legal the institution of marriage among 
slaves. 2d. To preserve sacred the relations between parents and 
their young children ; and 3d. To repeal the laws prohibiting the 
education of slaves. If this modification in the laws is made in 
North Carolina, as we are informed it probably will, other States 
will no doubt take the matter into consideration. The main fea- 
tures of the movement have been adopted in practice, or at least 
approved in theory, by nearly all our planters, so far as circum- 
stances would allow; and we cannot but think the modification 
is well worth the serious consideration of every southern man. 
Should the southern people think proper, after due investiga- 
tion, to adopt the regulation in each of the slave States, slavery 
will then be regarded in an entire new light, and the enemies of 
the institution will then be robbed of their most fruitful and 
plausible excuse for agitation and complaint. There may be, 
however, evils to contend with, and objections to be answered, in 
the adoption of such a modification. We therefore leave the sub- 
ject open for future consideration, and, in the mean time, invite 
a free examination of the subject by our readers." 



Section IIL 

Sales and Emigration. 

The whole matter of Sales comes to be considered in connection 
with the requirement that the domestic relations shall be estab- 
lished and sacredly regarded. Besides the limitation of sales re- 
quired by the domestic relations, there may be others needful. 



95 

1. It is desirable, if not indispensable, that sales should not be 
made without consent, except in the case of young children sold 
with their parents ; or orphans of such age that, as free, they 
would be disposed of at the discretion of their guardians, or the 
civil authorities. The more nearly this regulation can be 
adopted, the more cheerful and effective will service be likely 
to become, 

2. There seems needful, at least, a special provision in behalf of 
young females, whether in view of their actual exposure to the 
passions of base men, or to those apprehensions and fears which 
they may feel, making sales against their will the greatest injustice 
and cruelty. No sales of young females should be made without 
tlR-ir own consent and that of their friends, except under due exami- 
nation and decision. 

3. There may be a provision for the sale of refractory slaves, 
without their consent, under the supervision and decision of the 
proper authorities ; which sale is to be considered as a transporta- 
tion for misconduct. 

If these prohibitions to sales now allowed by law, are made, it is 
Iilain that great inconvenience must arise to all classes of the com- 
munity, whether sellers or purchasers, debtors or creditors. The 
inconvenience seems so great, that it is generally assumed that the 
right of indiscriminate sale is essential to the institution ; and that 
it must be valueless without it. "We admit the immediate inconve- 
nience, but find in the advantages of a Remedial Code certain com- 
jiensations, and at length a more valuable use and disposal of slave 
labor. 

1. The use of labor may be supposed to become more easy, secure, 
and advantageous, by means of the new restrictions on sales. 
When the domestic relations, and even the w ishes of the slaves, are 
known to be regarded, labor may become so much more valuable, 
that there will be far less occasion for the sales which now seem 
indispensable. The relief may be found in the more economi- 
cal expenditure of a contented service, in the better industry of the 
laborers, the better cultivation of estates, or their enlargement by 
the redemption of waste lands. Thus, there may be less debt to 
provide for, less risk to the creditor, and less damage than would 
occur if slaves were not liable to " execution for debt," in the pres- 
ent state of things. 



2. If the condition of both masters and slaves is made better, and 
if slave labor is thereby more satisfactory, then there may be less 
unwillingness to be sold, and thus an improved opportunity of sale 
by consent, beyond what would be found at present. 

3. No doubt, also, when there are occasions for sale, there 
will be found methods of selling whole families together, by barter 
or otherwise, with advantage to both buyers and sellers, and with a 
more satisfactory condition of the slave family itself. 

4. Slaves may be made willing to be sold often, no doubt, by a 
" bonus," given by buyer or seller, or both, or by a bounty proffered 
in certain cases by the State, to accrue to the slave's advantage, and 
to be invested for him ; and if with his master, then to be secured 
on his person, as hereafter explained. In this way it may be hoped 
that the occasions of buyers will be provided for, either by the 
consent of the immediate parties sought, or by its general influence 
upon the labor market at large. Thus under " the fishing bounty," 
the individual captain may succeed in obtaining the " hands " he 
seeks ; and if not, will find a sufficient supply in the general mar- 
ket. Thus it may be supposed that even the great western market 
may find supply. A government " bounty " accruing to the slaves, 
might be found to furnish voluntary labor, up to the whole demand 
for western emigration. 

5. Under the arrangements for tlie property of slaves, which we 
have to propose, there is yet another relief to debtor and creditor. 
The slaves themselves may prevent the necessity of sales, by loan- 
ing their own property to their masters, on the security of their 
own persons up to the amount loaned ; thus relieving their masters, 
satisfying the creditor, investing their own savings securely, and 
keeping whatever favorable position they may be enjoying in their 
master's service. 

6. As to the security for debt now existing in the liability of sale, 
the State, if it abolish the existing law on which they were made, 
must answer for all contracts. "When the courts have given judg- 
ment against the debtor, the judgment must be levied on the State 
and not on the master, and the State, if needful, must make such 
disposal of the slaves as is consistent with the new regulations, and 
hold itself responsible for any balance which would have accrued 
to the creditor, if the slaves had been sold without the " ex post 
facto " disadvantage. 



97 

7. The new restrictions once enacted, then all confracts would 
come to be made in view of them, and the business of life would 
go forward as it now does, under settled legal exemptions. It is no 
new principle to make exemptions of property, and to liav(; them 
taken into the account in making contracts. The widow's dower is 
a long-established instance. With questionable reason, some States 
have added the homestead exemption. 

8. The distribution of estates, except as emljarrassed by iiiiful- 
filled contracts, may, perhaps, from the first, be required to take its 
course under the new laws. 

9. "With regard to the occasions of buyers — to the whole dilficulty 
of getting the service which is needful — in the first place, buyers 
must submit to the indispensable changes, for the sake of humanity 
and justice, at whatever inconvenience ; while, in the second place, 
it may be hoped that methods will be found of supplying every 
needful service within the scope of humanity and justice ; and thus 
with tlie prospect of better service. 

10. "With regard to the requirements of emigration, the especial 
necessity of our extending settlements, at the South as wull as at 
the North : — No doubt there must be at the North, as at 
the South, a continual emigration of capital and labor, with the 
desire to improve a prosperous or to repair an impaired condi- 
tion ; and as at the North, so at the South, it must often be with 
the painful severance of family bonds. But this severance must 
be on tlie same principles with the slaves as with the free ; must 
never be with the slaves in such wise as is not tolerated with 
the free. 

Nevertheless, if there be emigration, if the southern "West is to bo 
occupied from the southern East, there must be a removal of labor 
as well as capital — of slaves as well as masters. Ihit let the re- 
moval of slaves and the supply of labor be provided i'ur in such 
ways as the following : — 

(1.) Let the removal of slaves be icith their masters and their 
masters' children, of them and their children. Let it be a patriar- 
chal removal. Let whole ftimilies of slaves be removed, parties 
being exchanged, by barter or sale, with neighboring plantations, in 
such wise as to unite families, whether left or carried. 

(2.) So far as the good will of the slave is concerned in this matter, 
and witli the general design of furnishing a suflicient supply of emi- 
9 



98 

grating labor for the soutli-tvestern market, there may be offered, as 
intimated in reference to the general market, a bounty, which, for 
this purpose, may be special and larger than for other services, ^ 
thus securing volunteers ; the bounty, if the slave desire it, to be 
secured on his person. 

(3.) There is yet another method of providing for south-western 
emigration, viz. : The removal of free blacks as laborers with 
good wages ; i. e., provided that adequate laborers can be furnished 
from this class. There must always be a multitude sufficiently 
needy to be induced by the promise of geod wages, to try a new 
method of life, where, without being enslaved, they may have the 
opportunity of labor and acquisition, — the provisions and securities 
which capital alone can furnish. 

In order to aid this arrangement, and thus to rid themselves of 
an ill-provisioned population, as well as make good provision for 
it, the States, severally, may extend the " bounty " to those free 
blacks who shall go west as free laborers, under such engagements 
as will render them available. »Such " bounty " might be under 
the supervision of State commissioners, appointed to make the 
arrangement mutually advantageous to the employers and em- 
ployed. 

If the West Indies can be at the expense of importing " coolies " 
for their plantations, or in truth if slaves can be imported from 
Africa ; or, once more, if the internal slave trade can find a con- 
stant market, then surely the purchasers can afford and will be 
willing to give a " bonus " and wages, such as might be an induce- 
ment to large numbers of " free blacks," at once to emigrate and to 
become available laborers, even without the " bounty " which we 
have proposed should be offered by the State. 



Section IV. 

Slaves to he capable of acquiring and holding Property. 

The law of marriage being settled, and the domestic relations 
secured, there must needs be added the power of acquiring and 
holding property for themselves and their heirs, under the general 
laws of property and inheritance, with whatever special rules and 
limitations. 



It is understood that the master's claim to service is to remain 
unimpaired and undisturbed. This, due to the master, for rations 
and securities, is to be considerad as otved by the slave, up to the 
average value of good and faithful slave labor. And this service is 
not only owed, but necessary,^ also, in order that the master may be 
able to give the rations and securities required ; may sustain the 
capital and arrangements, which, without labor, must become aa 
unavailable to the slaves as to himself. It may be found on trial, 
on the other hand, that the master's advanttige is promoted by the 
privilege here required for the slave ; that his own property will 
be more valuable because property is allowed and secured to the 
slave. This will certainly be the case if he is rendered thereby 
more contented and hopeful in his lot, and more just and gen- 
erous, in proportion to the justice and generosity with which 
he is treated. The possession of property, with the protection 
of the domestic relations, must be conservative in the highest 
degree. 

1. Without any alterations in existing arrangements, there is yet 
room for slaves to acquire property. Fulfilling their labors as 
slaves, and returning thus for what they receive, there is even novir 
scope for acquisition for themselves. What we propose is to legal- 
ize what already exists, and to extend it to the secure holding, dis- 
posal, and transmission of property. This legalized property may 
be acquired, as extra money now is, by whatever honest means, after 
the labor due for rations and privileges has been done ; by whatever 
work a slave can do above his allotted work or task ; by whatever 
" bonus " may be given for faithful and successful labors ; or, as is 
now often allowed, the slave may claim the privilege of laboring on 
his own account, on the security of some responsible person, re- 
turning a fixed sum to his master. This is the Russian ohroJc, which 
j)roves such a mitigation of the serfs lot.* 

2. As capacity and capital increase, so as to prepare them lor 
larger employments, they may be permitted to take charge of certain 
departments or certain portions of an estate ; thus employing and 
increasing the property which as slaves they may have been able to 
acquire. They may become, also, contractors for any work within 
their scope, under some satisfactory arrangement with the master 

* Allison's Europe, p. 412. 



100 

for service due, and to whatever extent their skill and capital may 
reach. 

3. The redemption of waste lands furnishes another obvious mode 
of acquiring property. Slaves may be encouraged to expend their 
extra labor and gains on such lands, under the assurance that the 
improvements made shall accrue to their benefit, under some mod- 
erate allowance for the bottom, or at some agreed or arbitrated 
price. A provision for such improvements exists in China. " Any 
one, by simply applying to government, may obtain permission ; 
and a wise exemption from taxes until the land becomes pro- 
ductive, allows the cultivator to reap a proper reward for his 
industry." * 

4. They may take leases of property, working it with their capi- 
tal, paying rent for their persons and lands, and having a claim for 
remuneration for all improvements they make, at a fair and arbi- 
trated rate. To such leases, with security for the improvements 
made, the comparative prosperity of Ulster is ascribed amidst the 
miseries of Ireland.f Such leases may be made in perpetuity, if 
experience should encourage it, as likely to be beneficial to the 
slaves and the masters alike. The lease in perpetuity of lands and 
persons would indeed be a virtual freedom, lacking only the rent 
paid for his own person ; and in view of a provision hereafter to 
be suggested, thus paid, in preference to diminishing his capital by 
the price of his person. Of the advantage of leases in perpetuity, 
both to proprietors and tenants, we have illustration in Mr. Col- 
thurst's account of an experiment in Ireland, on two estates under 
his charge. J 

Besides legalizing the acquisition of property, it becomes a Chris- 
tian State, wise and merciful, to encourage and aid its secure and 
advantageous investment. There arc modes of investment implied 
in the preceding ways of acquisition. The following direct methods 
are suggested. 

1. An open account with the master, and held by the slave, like a 
savings-bank book ; the sums to be on a moderate interest, and 
secured on the person of the slave, so that if the master refuse or 

* Blackwood's Magazine, Oct. 1854, p. 595. 
t New York Observer, July 5, 1850. 
X London Morning Chronicle, January 2, 1849. 



101 

fail to pay, the debt may avail (o such portion of freedom as the 
sums loaned might claim ; the freedom having a fixed or adjudicated 
value. 

2. Slaves, like freemen, according to their means, may be allowed 
to purchase any kind of personal property or real estate, and to 
hold and transmit it as if they were free ; themselves still holden to 
good and faithful slave service, or an accepted compensation 
therefor. 

3. Savings-banks may be instituted within the knowledge and 
reach of contiguous estates. This has been suggested at the 
South. The New Orleans Bulletin, April, 1854, recommends it in 
connection with a fact illustrating the power of present acquisition. 
A master appeared in court, claiming in behalf of a female slave 
five hundred dollars, which she had loaned and which was fraudu- 
lently retained. Another instance has been reported, of complaint 
by a slave that he had been robbed of a considerable amount, which 
complaint was aided by the master's testimony, that he was likely 
to have had the amount named, and that he had himself been some- 
times a borrower from that very slave. Surely, besides legalizing 
surh acquisitions, the State should see that the convenience and 
security of the savings-banks is extended to the slaves ; well 
assured that neither the masters nor the State will suffer dam- 
age thereby. 

4. There is yet another mode of investment, viz., the piircltase of 
freedom ; if the slave prefer thus to invest his savings, instead of 

keeping them for his present use and comfort, or for greater increase 
in view of the future occasions of himself and family. Under the 
amelioration proposed, freedom will become less and less desirable, 
and probably less and less desired. Still, no doubt, it should be an 
t)bjcct attainable by those who may choose to sacrifice its price. 
There may be, then, legalized an open account with the master, for 
the purchase of freedom ; always available in proportion, if the 
master should be unable to refund. Or the slave, making his in- 
vestments in whatever ways he may prefer, may claim his freedom 
on the payment of a registered or adjudicated price. In the case of 
partial freedom, obtained by means of debt from the master to the 
slave, it might be in fractions of a week, as exemplified in the Cod- 
rington estate, Barbadocs, under the care of the Society for promot- 
ing Christian Knowledge, the slave becoming Monday free, Tues- 
9* 



102 

day free, &c., until lie had acquired the whole six days of the 
week. 



Section V. 
Education and Religious Worship. 

No doubt the slaves are human, and have a right to all possible 
advantages belonging to their humanity ; are entitled to all possi- 
ble provision for their wants as intellectual, moral, and social beings. 
As we fail in regard to the European race, so we may do, in fact, 
in regard to the African ; but there is no just principle of failure 
with either. Individually and socially, we are bound to provide 
according to our power for both races alike. 

In requiring, then, education and religious worship for the slaves, 
is it needful to abolish slavery? Or may we not aid and secure 
these advantages better by slavery retained ? i. e., in its essential 
quality of being held to labor ; better than by annulling the obliga- 
tion and the habits of obedient labor? Whatever answer experi- 
ence may give to these questions, it is plain that under a Remedial 
Code, at once retaining and ameliorating their present relation to 
their masters, both influence and authority will have advantage in 
aiding and directing the best arrangements. 

As every where else, education must be understood as including 
religious education. The human being can have no education suit- 
ed to his whole nature and necessities unless it be religious ; not 
even for time and earth. No education is suitable for man, which 
does not provide for his right conduct, and of course which does not 
provide the motives for right conduct ; which does not require and 
aid the inward principles on which men should act ; by which temp- 
tations may be overcome, evil tendencies checked, and moral wrong 
and ruin prevented for earth and time, as well as for eternity. If 
education must be religious, it must also be scriptural ; for as Chris- 
tian men and a Christian people, we have accepted the Scriptures 
as the supreme guide and authority. In this requirement we pro- 
vide against sectarian teaching ; believing that for the great pur- 
poses of this life and the next, the Bible unexplained is ample, — 
that he who is taught the Bible has abundant oi)portunity to learn 
Lis duties to God and man, — his whole guilt and need, and all the 



103 

grace and goodness ■which meets him to aid and enable his recovery 
and salvation. 

With religious education, all education should proceed ; and this 
leading the way, all education possible and suitable to the individual 
will require to be provided for. Reading, of course, is the natural 
ally and effect of religious education. To this should be added the 
two other keys of knowledge, writing and arithmetic. All this needs 
to be legalized, if not required by the State. "Without being claimed 
and enforced by the laws, the repeal of all laws to the contrary 
would give scope to the conscience and good will of masters and their 
families, and would go far to promote general education ; and so 
much the more, as the influence and general authority of slavery is 
retained. Free scope, also, would be giveii to the general Cliris- 
tian zeal of the country. 

There must also be a provision for religious loorshij) and instruc- 
tion. There is difficulty in this, owing to the difference of relig- 
ious sects. Tills difficulty must be met, no doubt, with toleration. 
This being understood, then there is obvious reason for an actual 
choice or preference, for each separate locality ; since, while any 
thing and every thing is waited for, nothing positive will be done. 
In most cases — the truth being supposed on the whole maintained 
— the denomination is to be preferred which has already the van- 
tage ground ; the encouragement should go with and not against 
any good current already flowing. 

Speaking absolutely and in view of the general wants of the 
human mind, and of the slaves in particular, there are obvious ad- 
vantages in a liturgy, — where it can be received with good will, — 
with which the Church of England is so well furnished. Especially 
would a liturgy and suitable homilies be of great value on estates, 
or unions of estates, where there is not a stated ministry. "Where 
there is no such liturgy provided, it is plain that the Scriptures fur- 
nish abundant materials for public worship and instruction, — the 
psalms furnishing prayers and chants. 

No doubt there should be provided, as extensively as possible, 
houses of public worship, for the slaves alone, where they choose 
it and are sufficiently numerous ; but by preference for the masters 
and slaves together, with no other distinctions than belong to all 
countries and times, to the relations of masters and servants — dis- 
tinctions not discarded by the Old Testanient or the New. 



104 

And will education and religious worship destroy or embarrasa 
the institution ? will it destroy or impair the essential quality of 
slavery ? will the slave be less easily " held to labor ? " 

In reply : Let a Remedial Code be regarded as a beneficial 
whole. If the ameliorations are really better than emancipation — 
if the rations and privileges retained with slavery are better to 
the slave than perfect freedom without them, it is not to be doubted 
that the best educated will perceive it, and know better than to 
give up the solid advantages of " rations and privileges " for the 
empty name of freedom — then bringing no essential blessing to 
them and their children. The causes of discontent removed, a 
contented people may be hoped for ; the motives to disorder and 
rebellion no longer existing, the fears of disorder and rebellion may 
pass away. The masters becoming in truth the patriarchs of the 
communities around them, the affections and influences which bind 
them even now together will be strengthened, and mutual confidence 
prevail so much the more, and not so much the less, as the peasantry 
are educated intellectually, morally and religiously. 

Further, under the ameliorations proposed, active and enterpris- 
ing spirits must needs find various scope in legitimate ways. The 
natural desires which issue in establishing the young in domestic 
life, — the care of young families, now as secure from dispersion as 
those of the white race, — the attempt for increasing property, now 
legalized to those still " held to labor," and thereby greater com- 
forts and hopes, — the care of enlarged business to those who be- 
come capable of it by growing capacity and capital ; and if they 
desire, the open chance of h&Vmg full freedom, not without but with 
the means of supplying the lost " rations and privileges ; " — all these 
will give ample scope and employment to whatever energy and ac- 
tivity, to whatever capacity and education. Still further, there 
would be opening, continually, various offices of teaching, of relig- 
ious service and of internal police. 

Section VI. 

The Protection of the Latvs : Judicial Provisions and Methods. 

The whole social polity of a State has, no doubt, for its essential 
rule, " Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even 



105 

so to them." The rule for the individual must be the rule for the 
corporate responsibility, which God holds to account; and all laws 
should be in harmony with it ; no law should contradict it. But 
this essential rule is to be applied according to right and wise 
desires, and not to those which arc wrong and foolish. It does not 
require, for instance, parental authority, or the parental states, to 
abrogate the laws which subject minority, and yield to the wi-ong 
and foolish wishes of the inexperienced and self-confident " teens ; " 
for absurd and fatal misrule, though it be in correspond(>nc(' with 
the remembered longings of early life. In like manner lliere is 
no rule of Christian good-will requiring of the State, laws, provisions, 
methods for the slave, save as they be right and wise, and not 
wrong and foolish, in view of their whole condition and rilistions, 
whatever we may suppose ourselves to have wished amiss if wc 
had been in their place. 

We do not proceed on the supposition that a complete and per- 
fect code can be formed and introduced at once. But endeavoring 
to survey the whole ground, we must form the most perfect pro- 
gramme that we can ; conscious to what imperfection we are liable. 
Our business must then be to. begin with the most obvious demands, 
and to proceed from step to step as experience and good judgment 
may direct ; assured that no present proposal can foreshow the 
finished work. With reference to our progress, thus far ; the estab- 
lishment and protection of the family relations, and the allowance 
and security of property, are obvious demands, which granted, would 
essentially improve the condition of the slaves, whatever other mat- 
ters were left unchanged. Certain of the suggestions of the present 
chapter may be so pLiin as to claim instant ado{)tion, while others 
may be questionable in whole or in part, and may require to 
wait upon time and experience. With this impression, we aim 
to make our suggestions as coniplitc as we can; providing for 
whatever special ameliorations, and for the general well-being of 
the enslaved. 

1. The general laws of the State and the provisions for their exe- 
cution, must be considered as equally for the protection of bond and 
free ; with only such just and merciful exceptions as belong to the 
mutual relations of capital and labor, still by law retained. If there 
be any other exception, it should be in favor of the slave, the law 
providing specially for his aid in any emergency, as the more help- 
less party. 



106 

2. There must needs be a repeal of all cruel and oppressive laws ; 
and whatever cruelty or oppression may have been sanctioned by 
custom must be forbidden by law. As intimated in Section 1, all 
summary whipping even, must be forbidden ; for if force must still 
be allowed to compel labor, it will do it witli better success when it 
is deliberate and judicial, and therefore unfrequent. The most 
effectual penalty for oppression and cruelty of any sort may be the 
forfeiture of the slave ; partly to himself, and partly to some public 
fund in aid of a Remedial Code. 

3. In order to secure justice it is indispensable to admit the testi- 
mony of slaves ; — it may be done cautiously and experimentally at 
first ; but probably better, instantly and fully, with such conditions as 
shall best tend to secure its truth. If their testimony must be consid- 
ered unreliable, it should be remembered that it may become more 
trustworthy the more it is trusted ; and that, at the worst, the tend- 
ency of falsehood is always to betray itself and to discover and sus- 
tain the truth — giving still the opportunity of right decision amidst 
false witnesses. This triumph of truth over falsehood has been had 
a thousand times in the courts of Hindostan, by means of falsehood 
itself. 

4. There may be needed the repeal of laws interfering with harm- 
less liberties and innocent assemblings, which can only be decided 
in view of circumstances as they are, or may become, in the pro- 
gress of ameliorations. In general terms, the occasions which seemed 
to require such laws may be expected to become less and less 
numerous and imperious, as improvements are made in the general 
condition of the slaves. A contented peasantry would not need 
them. 

5. There may be required officers and courts of the slaves them- 
selves, capable of arresting Avrong proceedings, of requiring and 
enforcing labor from the slaves, and rations and privileges and fair 
treatment from the master ; all checked and restrained by the right 
of appeal to the higher courts. 

There may be conservative, preventive, and even judicial officers 
— a shve tribune, with power to arrest arbitrary proceedings and 
require investigation ; a court of slaves themselves corresponding to 
a justice's court, with one justice and two assessors, with power to 
call juries in certain cases ; these officers to be chosen from the 
slaves, and by the slaves, of an estate or contiguous estates, under the 
power of veto by the master or the courts. 



107 

To these arrangements among the shives themselves there might 
be added a clerk of court, by appointment of the masters, wliose 
business it shouhl be to record, and thus make vabd every tri- 
bunitial arrest of proceedings ; to attend all proceedings of the 
slave courts, and make record with authentication, before adjourn- 
ment — at once in security that the proceedings shall not be 
hasty and inconsiderate, and as a preparation lor any needful 
review. 

Some of these suggestions are encouraged by experiments. 

"I took," says Mr. Steele, with reference to his estate in the 
Island of Barbadoes, 1783, "the whips, and all power of arbi- 
trary punishment, from all the overseers and their white servants, 
wliicb occasioned my chief overseer to resign, and I soon dismissed 
all his deputies who could not bear the loss of their whips ; but at 
the same time, that a proper subordination and obedience to lawful 
orders and duties should be preserved, I created a magistracy out 
of the negroes themselves, and appointed a court or jury of the 
elder negroes or head men, for trial and punishment of all casual 
offences ; and these courts were always to be held in my presence, or 
in that of my new superintendent. Seven of these men, being of 
the rank of drivers in their different departments, were also consti- 
tuted rulers, as magistrates, over all the gang, and were charged to 
see at all times that nothing should go wrong on the plantation ; but 
that on all necessary occasions they should assemble and consult 
togctlur how any such wrong should be immediately rectified." "With 
tliese arrangements there was also connected a system of rewards 
witli certain amounts of labor. With reference to the effect of the 
whole, he says : — 

"A plantation of between seven and eight liundrod acres has 
been governed by fixed laws and a negro court, for about five years, 
with great success. In this plantation, no overseer or white servant 
is allowed to lift his hand against a negro, nor can he arbitrarily 
order punishment. Fixed laws and a court or jury of their peers 
keep all in order without the ill effect of sudden and intemperate 
passions." * 

Mr. 31'Donough's experiment is thus given by Mr. Sawtelle, in 
his letter from New Orleans, April 20, 18-47, published in the Xew 
York Observer, July 31: — 

* See Clarkson's " Tlioughts," &c. 



108 

" The slaves are organized into a perfect republic, possessing all 
the elements of a free, legislative government. Their trials for 
misdemeanors and crimes are by a jury, with witnesses examined 
and special pleadings, with all the solemnities of a court. In im- 
portant and difficult cases, the old master is called in to preside as 
judge, and to decide upon some difficult point of law ; but the ver- 
dict, sentence, and execution are all in their own hands." 

Section VII. 
Franchises and Freedom. 

AVe have proceeded on the assumption that slavery, ameliorated 
as proposed, is a virtual freedom, while yet the essential element 
of slavery, the " being held to labor," is retained : the best freedom 
for the slaves, as a mass, in their actual circumstances now, and for 
an indefinite future. A Remedial Code is not preparatory to eman- 
cipation, but instead of it. 

Nevertheless, there may be supposed admissible in the progress 
of amelioration, first, some extension of franchises to those remaining 
slaves ; and secondly, an opportunity of full emancipation to such 
as may choose it ; thus giving to all some share in providing for 
their social well-being, and opening the path for individual progress 
and advancement. 

1. The franchises of the mass of slaves, remaining slaves, may be 
extended, if, in the progress of amelioration, the way should be 
clear. We have proposed already that they should be able to elect 
certain magistrates to act in their own affiiirs. To this may come 
to be added, on their possessing a certain amount of property, a 
right of voting {jus suffragii) in the State, by means of slave 
*' Comitia ; " their votes having a fractional value compared with 
the votes of the free; perhaps the same fraction actively, as 
now passively, in the United States. This fractional franchise 
might be limited to matters in which their own well-being is spe- 
cially concerned. 

2. There should he open to all the opportunity of acquiring fiiU 
personal freedom ; i. e., the entire release of the slave from being 
held to labor, with the corresponding release of the master from the 
obligation of rations and privileges. In this opportunity there may 



109 

be a two-fold advantage, viz., of hope and exertion in those who 
may aspire to personal freedom, and of contentment in the mass ; 
at once in view of the failure of advantage to those becoming free, 
and the still open way to those who may choose it. Thus it is well 
that the way to mercantile and commercial enterprise is open to the 
whole agricultural community of the North, for the like two-fold 
advantage of hope and exertion on the one hand, and contentment, 
with the settled advantages of their birthright lot, on the other. 

The master may be required to sell at a fixed, agreed, arbi- 
trated, or adjudicated price ; and also to keep an open account with 
the slave preparatory thereto ; thus incurring a debt to the slave, 
available to fractional parts of his liberty as its security, and to full 
liberty at last. In like manner, all debts of the master to the slave 
secured on his person, may, for lack of payment, end in a fraction 
or the whole of personal liberty, whether desired or not. 

The fractions of liberty attained might be registered according to 
law, the master being thei-eby free from a like fraction of rations 
and privileges to the slave, and the slave being then entitled to the 
use of his freed time. If he be sold, it must be under the reserva- 
tion of his partial freedom. 

3. Slaves becoming personally free, must come with reference 
to franchise into the condition of their class in the States where 
they reside. If Massachusetts had now slaves to be freed, they 
would come into the full franchise of citizens ; and without damage, 
if the class remained in its present minute proportion to the whole 
people. At the South, they must come into the actual condition of 
their class, and without the franchise of citizens, but at liberty to 
remove, or to remain contented with their lot, awaiting any changes 
which time and experience may suggest, — such franchises, for in- 
stance, as have been suggested for the slaves in comitia for certain 
purposes, and coinmunal, wherever they may form separate commu- 
nities. If it be insisted that there is no available freedom without 
full citizenship, it may be replied that the State has done its duty 
when it has legislated /or them, though not by them; provided their 
absolute interests have been duly cared for ; and if their position is 
still unsatisfactory, that they are at liberty to withdraw to those 
States where full franchise is allowed ; no doubt to be checked and 
disfranchised if their ingress should be rapid and great : the sense 
10 



110 

of the North being now and then proving itself against free soil for 
large proportions of the African race in theu- midst. 

As to any presumed danger that the numbers of the free would 
become too great for the interests of labor, and of course of the 
slaves as well as of the masters, it may be answered, — 

Under slavery ameliorated, with families established and pro- 
tected and property legaUzed, there must be expected such a regard 
to the uses of property, to the advantages and comforts which it 
adds to the rations and privileges of slavery, as will prevent too 
numerous purchasers of freedom. And this regard to the uses of 
property cannot fail to be enhanced, by the observation of the free 
as being often in worse condition than those remaining in slavery, 
and enjoying at once the provisions of slavery and their own legal- 
ized property beside. The present free blacks at the South may 
themselves come to desu'e the ameliorated slavery. Besides, if there 
be proper " methods for the free," then this class may be found 
more and more fulfilling their part in every department of labor, 
like the free citizens of the North; and .more than compensating 
any deficiencies caused by the ameliorations of slavery. 



Section VIII. 

The Metliods for the Free. 

If freedom should extend to any considerable numbers, there 
would then be imperiously required some special methods for the 
free, by which their own welfare might be the better aided and 
secured, as well as that of the other portions of the community. 
Indeed, even now, at the North and at the South, the necessity of 
some special methods is manifest ; and if this be questionable at the 
North, it is only because their numbers are so small. Owing to 
peculiarities of race and condition, there have been found difficul- 
ties hitherto, and there is a dread of any considerable increase of 
the class, not only in the slave States and the free States adjoining, 
but even to the remotest North, And these difficulties and this 
dread are not due to slavery merely, but must have existed if the 
emigration from Africa and tlie settlement in this country had been 
free from the first, unless prevented by the wasting of the African 
race like the aboriginal barbarians. "With the race among us, and 



Ill 

with experience of the difficuUics belonging to them as free, we 
seek methods suited to the case. 

1. Freed slaves may be required, for a term of years at least, to 
register their names, occupations, places of abode, and the returns 
of their industry up to a certain amount, and if found vagrant and 
neglectful may be compelled to labor. As the State must take 
charge of free, colored pauperism, in lieu of the former masters, so 
it may take measures to prevent it. No community can be required 
to confer the right of food, raiment, and lodging, and at the same 
lime to leave the right of idleness and vagrancy, — of want, to be 
provided for. 

2. Under the above regulation, there may be allowed full liberty 
of settlement and employment. 

3. Arrangements in aid of free colored people, such as have been 
spoken of in regard to those remaining slaves, are desirable ; 
encouraging the acquisition and investment of property. Methods 
of acquisition and investment should be provided for them. 

4. The above being understood, — that they are to have full 
liberty of settlement and employment, and to be specially aided 
and encouraged in the acquisition and investment of property, 
— then, fouri/tli/, the employments to which they are accustomed 
and which are the most open to them, are to be chosen, and are not 
to be forsaken, without definite and good reason, in the mere hope 
of changes for the better, any more with them than with the white 
race when similarly situated. The servile employments to which 
so many of them have been accustomed, are good employments 
whether for white or black, whenever useful service can obtain its 
reward. If they be " low," it is better to continue in them than to 
make premature attempts to " rise." This is true of any race of 
people. It is true of those in servile employments of our own 
people. There must be more reason for the assertion, if pecu- 
liarities of origin, character, and race have hitherto consigned the 
free negroes to those employments ; and must have done so, if their 
immigration and settlement had been as free as that of the Saxon 
race. Servile employments are good employments when God orders 
them. And whoever in them, of whatever race or color, is faithful, 
honest, capable, will find the best elements of well-being ; and through 
them, not in shunning them, the best means — character, friends, 
focilities — by which to rise, as Providence may open the way, to 



112 

those higher employments to which multitudes of the white race 
never attain. 

But this "rising" to higher employments is not the thing to 
be desired. In large communities there must be servile employ- 
ments filled by those whom Providence directs. This is not an 
unrighteous state of society. There is nothing degrading in serv- 
ing others. " Act well your part, there all the honor lies." There 
is room, even in enforced service, for the highest excellence and 
honor. The servants of men, free from " eye service," and " serv- 
ing the Lord Christ, with singleness of heart and fearing God, 

shall receive the reward of the inheritance." In truth, 

remaining for the most part as they are, in their accustomed 
employments, they will find themselves the happiest and most 
respected, — being more independent, more self-directing, more 
useful to others, and more capable of reaching something higher, 
than if they were specially separated from lower to higher employ- 
ments. In order to be qualified for much, a man must have 
been faithful in that which is little. This maxim of divine wisdom, 
true for all, must be more deeply true of a race in degree unim- 
proved and barbarous. It is false charity and false confidence, 
which is forever underrating servile employments, in the estimation 
of those who are found in them, and who have yet to prove them- 
selves above them. . . . Let whoever can, by his own exertions 
and the favor of Providence, " rise," whether he be black or white ; 
but he who shall " be raised," without his own skill and care, and 
against the provisions of Providence, will but sink the lower for the 
mistaken pains, whether he be white or black. Barbers, shoe- 
blacks, and waiters, whether white or black, cannot be raised by 
the talk or hands of others ; but acting their part well, so long as 
they must act it at all, are not low, not debased, not unblessed, but 
happy and honorable, and in the best way to " rise " to any worthy 
and desirable height. 

5, This claimed, then, let there be every facihty for them to rise 
to independent and leading employments. 

(1.) The opportunity of advancement to leading employments 
should be open to them where they are, as we have claimed 
already for the slaves, remaining slaves ; to do any thing they 
prove themselves capable of doing, however great the charge and 
responsibility; and in proportion to their fidelity and skill, they 



113 

will rise in respectability and usefulness, without let or hin- 
derance. 

(2.) They may be encouraged by " bounties " and wages to emi- 
grate, as laborers in order to improve their condition, becoming 
thus free substitutes for any slaves withdrawn by the necessary 
checks upon sale.* They may in this manner be well provided for, 
and as they may be capable and successful, find leading employ- 
ments, or become themselves proprietors Of course the way 

will be open, as now, from the South to the North, if they prefer. 

(3.) There may be, also, encouragements and facilities for form- 
ing free colored communities, as of townships or counties, in which 
the white race may be discouraged from settling, in such wise as 
to secure the predominance of the colored race, under the general 
laws of the States and the United States. Illustrating this, we 
have the account of a colored settlement at Carthagena, Mercer 
county, Ohio, briefly as follows : f 

In the hope of bettering their own condition and that of their 
children, some hundreds left their servile occupations in the cities, 
bought a tract of land thirty miles distant from the source of their 
provisions. Now (1843) they have many thousand acres of cleared 
land and comfortable houses, raise their own provisions, manufac- 
ture their own clothing, have horses, hogs, cattle, and sheep, and 
meeting houses and school houses. They have a sawmill and grist- 
mill. The white people respect them as much as they have reason 
to desire, come to their mills, employ their mechanics, and are em- 
ployed by them even as day laborers ; they buy and sell mutually. 

Should such separate settlements be found successful, they no doubt 
might be extended in the midst of the white population living con- 
tiguously on terms of good neighborhood, and with mutual advan- 
tage ; and the new regions grow with colored neighborhoods, and 
villages, and townships intermixed ; and wherever there were 
enough to form corporate bodies, they might then be admitted to 
such communal franchises as the States may award to the individu- 
als of their class. 

(4.) A principal method to " rise " must be emigration to Liberia^ 
as now under the patronage of the American Colonization Society. 

• Compare Section 3. 
t New York Observer, August 5, 1843. 
10* 



114 

This method may be presumed good, and even the best for what- 
ever numbers can fuid a favorable entrance into the new colony; 
for whatever numbers may favor a well-ordered community, and 
shall not outgrow the capacity of self-preservation and self-direction. 
For limited, indeed, and yet for increasing numbers, it furnishes an 
opportunity at once for full franchises and all the employments of 
social life, even to the very highest. 

Besides the direct advantage thus afforded, there is also this ad- 
vantage indirectly. "In large communities there must be servile 
employments filled by those whom Providence directs." There 
must be those who work, as well as those who direct and pay for 
work. The more Liberia prospers and the more numerous its 
population, the more plain will it become that it furnishes no excep- 
tion to the common lot of men ; the more will it appear that free- 
dom on the highest scale, that entire separation from the evils of 
slavery and from the prejudices of color, does not reverse the mer- 
ciful as well as just doom, — In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt 
eat bread ; that no more in Africa than in America, can every body 
have high office and high place, wealth, and ease, and honor ; but 
that the mass in Africa, as well as America, black as well as white, 
with or without freedom, is still " held to labor," by the necessities of 
human condition, and by no act of man ; checking a thousand foolish 
aspirations of and for the African race. As Liberia prospei'S, if their 
condition be improved in some great essentials of human well-being, 
it must still become known in this country, and to the African race, 
whether bond or free, that the toils and difficulties of mortal life, 
and the distinctions even of masters and servants, are there as well 
as here ; that these are not the doom of slavery but of man — pre- 
paring their acquiescence in that ameliorated slavery for which we 
plead ; retaining only the indispensable elements of being " held to 
labor," and to maintain labor — loosing the bad bonds, and retain- 
ing only the good. 



115 



CONCLUSION. 



Let it be supposed that these ameliorations, prompted by the 
Southern States themselves, and by whatever suggestions, are faith- 
fully attempted, — the relation of master and slave thus far 
remaining, that the master is still " held " to provide rations and 
privileges, and the slave still " held to labor," by which alone 
provision can be made ; marriage established in its sacredness, and 
the domestic relations protected ; education and religious worship 
provided for ; the slaves legally capable of acquiring, holding and 
transmitting property, and equally with their masters under the 
protection of the law ; and all these with opportunities of freedom, 
and methods for the free, and we have then a Remedial Code in 
I)rogress and perfecting by experience, suited to the whole case of 
Africa in America. We claim by such a code. 

That the well-being of the slaves is provided for — that they are 
virtually free ; and in view of the actual condition of their race, 
more free than with the whole franchise of American citizens ; 
better provided for all the purposes of personal and domestic life, 
than by any general emancipation ; and in most cases, tlian by 
individual purchase at the sacrifice of property legally their own. 

That the well-being of the masters is provided for : the climate 
and productions of the South, and tlie original and actual condition 
of the enslaved race, and long-established customs and habits contin- 
uing for substance the present relations of property and labor, — 
of masters to be honored and servants to honor, with the advantage 
of greater cheerfulness and fidelity ; to the master's joy, more and 
ever more, in proportion as bad bonds are loosed and good bonds 
only retained. 

We claim, also, for the free negroes, a progressive deliverance 
from whatever real evils inlierited from Africa or America, and 
blessings in proportion to the blessings of the class from which they 
have sprung ; becoming more industrious and thriving in the midst 
of a thriving and industrious peasantiy, and accepting diligent labor 
as the best lot of freeman or slave ; whether where they are, or, if 
they will, and when they will, in the land of Uieir fathers, blessing 
Africa itself in the Christian industry of her returning sons. 

We claim, also, that in this direction, the conscience and philan- 



116 

thropy, of the country have fullest, freest scope ; not in instant 
remedy of all evils, but in just application of the great Christian 
law, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; " meeting property 
and labor, slave-holders and slaves, in their mutual necessities and 
iUs, — the suffering " neighbor " on our path not to pass by with 
indifference, cruelty, and scorn, nor yet with aimless wrangles while 
we help him not ; but with the " oil and wine " suited to his 
wounds ; with the very care he needs, according to our power ; sup- 
plying the present and providing for the future with generous 
arrangements and faithful promises. 

Nor need we despair of results so great. Whether in view of 
intrinsic or extrinsic difficulties — of the essential evils of Africa in 
America, or of reproachful zeal and discordant good-will, and even 
political anarchy in the strife of equal forces, we may still assume, 
The things which are impossible with men are possible with God. 
Not that we expect miracles to be wrought, or set forth our hope 
confessed an enthusiastic dream. Rather do we claim that the 
whole work of utmost difficulty is within the scope of a common 
Providence, answering the prayers and aiding the humble attempts 
of men ; not as in the exodus from Egypt, by the miracles of the 
divided sea, and manna from the skies ; but as in the deliverance 
from Babylon, by the aids of a common Providence, answering the 
prayers of the captives and blessing the purposes of men ; opening 
" the two-leaved gates," and breaking in sunder the " bars of iron," 
yet as gloriously " with a strong hand, and an outstretched arm." 



117 

POSTSCRIPT Dec. 15. 

The contest for Spcal-er iUiistratlng the law of equal forces.* 

The necessity of some new direction in regard to the question 
of American slavery, was never more manifest than this very day : 
the United States giving the maximum of illustration of their utter 
impotence, under the inviolable law of equal forces. If while we 
write, or at some indefinite future, a minute preponderance shall 
turn the scale, and our government be organized again, how plainly 
the law of equal forces will remain, producing impotence again, with 
only intervals of minute and momentary preponderance ; removing 
the question of slavery in every form from the National Legislature, 
and calling for the creation of new powers for new purposes, out 
of impotence itself. Instead of being shut, the way of wisdom 
and kindness will only be the more open to philanthropist and patri- 
arch, by the assurance that nothing can be done by authority and 
power. Instead of being open, the way will only be the more 
shut, by equibalanced attempts at authority and power. . . . 

As hitherto, after every struggle for sectional preponderance, the 
great questions between the North and the South must take their 
necessary settlement neither for the South against the North, nor 
for the North against the South, but leaving each to their own 
will and their own responsibility. The great Overruler has so 
nearly equibalanced them that neither section can prevail over the 
other. We may try to make the weight heavier on either arm 
of the balance, but the scales will declare the truth, the moment 
our hand is taken off. However many may be the librations, the 
scale must at length settle on the unalteral)le principles of equi- 
poise. We may quarrel over an impossibility, but we cannot coun- 
tervail it. As from tiie beginning useless strife must still give way 
to leaving matters as they were, — ineffectual and injurious con- 
tention to the necessary agreement to differ. 

This last struggle, essentially in vain, will not be in vain, if it 
teach the country the truth forever illustrated by baffled attempts 
to overrule, on the one side or the other ; that God has so settled 
the equilibrium of sections, tliat there can never be an overruling 

* Sec Chapter 10. 



118 

North, or an overruling South ; and if it be felt to the very heart 
of North and South, that their only strength in the even-bal- 
anced scale is in impotence acknowledged ; in " vis inertice " made 
available by wisdom and good will as a reservoir of beneficent 
power. The two great sections may influence and aid, they can- 
not direct and control each other. The labors wasted in useless, 
baneful strife, are sufficient to raise a " power " which can work 
blessings over all the land. Repeating from the preceding pages, 
" Northern philanthropy will do its utmost, not by authority where 
no authority exists, not by an imperative balance where there is 
an essential equipoise, but without authority, and notwithstanding 
impotence, whenever it shall unite an available wisdom to fraternal 
good will." 



DEDICATION. 

Decemher, 1856. 

In the Postscript to the first edition of this work, December 15, 
1855, when the contest for " Speaker" was but just begun, I found 
the United States giving the maximum of illustration of their utter 
imj)otence under the inviolable law of equal forces ; and claimed 
that only a minute preponderance could turn the scale, that 
impotence would recur again and again, — removing the question 
of Slavery in every form from the National Legislature, and 
calling for new powers, for new purposes, out of impotence itself. 

That contest ended after many long weeks in giving the " Speaker " 
to the North, in antagonism to tlie South ; but with a preponderance 
so minute as only to make more plain the law wliich had been 



119 

transgx'essed ; with no working faculty ; with no available power 
to give form to intention, to change purpose to enactment ; with 
no majesty of enforcement to give existence and stability to law ; 
impotent to the great work of sectional control, and only fore- 
showing and preparing the counter-vibration of the equi-balanced 
scale. 

Accordingly, despite the utmost efliorts to maintain and increase 
the preponderance, — to give weight to the Northern arm of the 
balance, — the scale has turned again ; yet not less plainly than 
before, with no decisive preponderance, reasserting and reassuring 
the law of equal forces, which neither Section is able to reverse. 
The Presidential election of November 4th, 185G, was the con- 
summation of proof that God has settled the equilibrium of Sections, 
so that there can never be an overruling North or an overruling 
South ; * — that impotence is the only strength in the even-balanced 
scale, the only element of beneficent power. 

At the same time what fearful illustration have we had of the 
miserable strifes of those whom God has joined together in essen- 
tial equality, — so much the more miserable because they can 
neither conquer nor separate, — threatening the lasting curse of the 
European race, with only evil to the African, who is the subject of the 
strife. So it happens, sometimes, in that best and earliest society, 
from which all society springs, — the family. The very elements of 
equal, inseparable and blessed union, render the life of the parties 



* It may bo asked, Docs not the law of equal forces produce the same impotence 
to prevent even the rc\-ival of the slave trade, with all its essential wrong, and all 
its voluntary accessions of enormity ? Undoubtedly it docs, — unless the forces shall 
refuse in that case to be equal. You can make a power with the long arm of your 
lever, but you can make none when both anns are equivalent. But, in\-iolable as is 
the law of equal forces, with regard to the existing fact of slavery, I deny that it 
docs or can have place in regard to the i-encwal of the slave trade. If it were pos- 
sible to suppose that the suggestions of a Southern governor and of Southern journals, 
which have just now startled the public mind, should venture to ask enactment and 
enforcement from the United States, — a living unity only by the provisional aboli- 
tion of the slave trade in the life-giving instrument itself, — the same causes which 
in 1787 united North and South, would be effectual again, only in tenfold greater 
power. The monitions of conscience, in regard to palpable and undeniable wrong, 
ruling the South as well as the North, — urged by the whole conscience and hu- 
manity of the Christian world, — would supply a force immeasurably greater to 
prevent the renewal, than there was to bring to pass the abolition of the slave trade. 



120 



only more wretched, because tliey can neither rule nor part, while 
ruin befalls the house which each is engaged to sustain. 

Under the deepest sense of these lessons and forewarnings of the 
year now drawing to its close, I dedicate this work to-day 

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, 

THE WHOLE PEOPLE, 

E P L U R I B IJ S U N U ^I . 

United by separation ; powerful over the parts by impotence 
as a whole ; weak in authority and power, strong by example and 
influence ; ruling by not ruling; — the foundations of the Pyramid 
on which the eye of Heaven has looked from the beginning, made 
firmer by every addition to its weight. 

May the vibrations of the even-balanced scale, in the year 1856, 
consummating the proof of the weakness of Sections against each 
other, and of their strength only for and with each other, inaugurate 

A NEW ERA, 

in which the whole wisdom of our history as one people, -^ great, 
undivided, indivisible, — shall prevail in councils and methods in 
regard to Southern slavery, as acceptable to the South as to the 
North, and as advantageous to the African as the European race, 
in their mysterious relations to each other. 



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